All tagged History

A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe by Milan Kundera

A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe by Milan Kundera

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Geographic Europe, from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains, has always been a land of two distinct worlds. One traced its lineage to ancient Rome and the Catholic Church, its languages shaped by the Latin alphabet. The other drew its roots from Byzantium and the Orthodox Church, adopting Cyrillic script for its tongues. But after 1945, the fragile balance shifted. The dividing line moved several hundred kilometers westward, leaving several nations that had long identified themselves as Western to wake up and find, to their dismay, that they now belonged to the East.

The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens

The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Civilization has spanned millennia, yet modern science—distinct from the ancient and medieval sciences or what was once called natural philosophy—has existed for only a few centuries. Why did it take so long? Why weren’t the ancient Babylonians launching zero-gravity observatories into orbit? Why weren’t the ancient Greeks developing flu vaccines and performing heart transplants? The ancients were certainly not devoid of a thirst to unravel the mysteries of the world.

The Medici by Paul Strathern

The Medici by Paul Strathern

Kristopia
Non Fiction

In The Medici, Paul Strathern presents a masterful narrative of one of the most influential families in the history of Florence, Italy. Strathern adeptly interweaves the Medici family's story with the broader historical and cultural context of Renaissance Italy, providing readers with a profound understanding of the era in which they flourished.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Kristopia
Non Fiction

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. The author brought forth the central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a complex combination of agriculture, geography, population density, and continental orientation. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. Throughout the book, Diamond showed us how history is not just “one damn fact after another” as cynic put it. There really are broad patterns to history, and the search for their explanation is as productive as it is fascinating.

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

Kristopia
Non Fiction

This is an analysis not of Britain, or the British Isles—but purely of the English. Tombs reviewed conventional beliefs about the past such as the Anglo-Saxon liberties, the common law, the influence of Magna Carta, and the cause and effect of the Industrial Revolution. Tombs also examined the ambiguities and aftermath of the Victorian age at the reasons for participating in the First World War, and the divided memories of that calamity.

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

Kristopia
Non Fiction

The present washed away the past. We forgot the yesterday where the Silk Roads is the bridges between the East and West where great centres of civilisation rose.  Ancient civilisation such as Babylon, Nineveh, Uruk and Akkad in Mesopotamia were famed for their grandeur and architectural innovation. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is where the world’s great religions burst into life, where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism jostled with each other. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is the cauldron where language groups competed, where Indo-European, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan tongues wagged along side those speaking Altaic, Turkic and Caucasian. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is where great empires rose and fell, where the after-effects of clashes between cultures and rivals were felt thousands of miles away.