Tyrant shows that Shakespeare’s work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge their appetites.

    He was also a murderer and a braggart, a shameless adventurer who at different times experienced both papal persecution and imprisonment, and the adulation of the royal court. Inn-keepers and prostitutes, kings and cardinals, artists and soldiers rub shoulders in the pages of his notorious autobiography: a vivid portrait of the manners and morals of both the rulers of the day and of their subjects. Written with supreme powers of invective and an irrepressible sense of humour, this is an unrivalled glimpse into the palaces and prisons of the Italy of Michelangelo and the Medici.

    With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the vast ceiling while the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. Battling against ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems, the pope's impatience, and a bitter rivalry with the brilliant young painter Raphael, Michelangelo created scenes so beautiful that they are considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. A panorama of illustrious figures converged around the creation of this great work-from the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus to the young Martin Luther-and Ross King skillfully weaves them through his compelling historical narrative, offering uncommon insight into the intersection of art and history.

    But in this thought-provoking collection, twenty-eight writers and scholars give engaging, often passionate accounts of their own nation’s history. The countries have been selected to represent every continent and every type of state: large and small; mature democracies and religious autocracies; states that have existed for thousands of years and those born as recently as the twentieth century. Together they contain two-thirds of the world’s population. In the United States, for example, the myth of the nation’s “historylessness” remains strong, but in China history is seen to play a crucial role in legitimizing three thousand years of imperial authority. “History wars” over the content of textbooks rage in countries as diverse as Australia, Russia, and Japan. Some countries, such as Iran or Egypt, are blessed—or cursed—with a glorious ancient history that the present cannot equal; others, such as Germany, must find ways of approaching and reconciling the pain of the recent past.

    It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and is considered to be Levi's crowning achievement.

    He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria and personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, a library of books never written.

    Powerful in war, Rome was magnificent in peace, so that even today her poets, artists, philosophers and historians exert their influence over Western thought and civilisation.Michael Grant, the renowned classical historian, recreates the evolution of this astonishing city and community. He describes the individuals and events that made Rome a political and cultural conqueror, and defines the dramatic circumstances of her eventual decline and fall.

    The Travels recounts Polo's journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polo's contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1271, Polo's account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polo's return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polo's prose at once reveals the medieval imagination's limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.

    No one has ever been able to determine their origins, and even the Basques' language, Euskera—the most ancient in Europe—is related to none other on earth. For centuries, their influence has been felt in nearly every realm, from religion to sports to commerce. Even today, the Basques are enjoying what may be the most important cultural renaissance in their long existence.Mark Kurlansky's passion for the Basque people and his exuberant eye for detail shine throughout this fascinating book. Like Cod, The Basque History of the World,blends human stories with economic, political, literary, and culinary history into a rich and heroic tale.Among the Basques' greatest accomplishments:Exploration—the first man to circumnavigate the globe, Juan Sebastian de Elcano, was a Basque and the Basques were the second Europeans, after the Vikings, in North America Gastronomy and agriculture—they were the first Europeans to eat corn and chili peppers and cultivate tobacco, and were among the first to use chocolate Religion—Ignatius Loyola, a Basque, founded the Jesuit religious order Business and politics—they introduced capitalism and modern commercial banking to southern Europe Recreation—they invented beach resorts, jai alai, and racing regattas, and were the first Europeans to play sports with balls“A delectable portrait of an uncanny, indomitable nation.” –Newsday“Exciting, Illuminating, and thought provoking.” –The Boston Globe"Entertaining and instructive… [Kurlansky’s] approach is unorthodox, mixing history with anecdotes, poems with recipes.” –The New York Times Book Review

    Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time.For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."

    Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the "plums" in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life—both "upstairs" and "downstairs."An illuminating glossary gives at a glance the meaning and significance of terms ranging from "ague" to "wainscoting," the specifics of the currency system, and a lively host of other details and curiosities of the day.

    Banfield uses a study of the people of southern Italy to argue how self-interested families can lead to poverty.Analyzing families in southern Italy in 1955, Moral Basis of a Backward Society discusses how poverty is a result of the inability to trust or associate strongly outside of immediate family. Challenged and argued for years, Edward C. Banfield’s study has become accept by many people in the modern age.

    Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could.In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

    In this unparalleled book, Marshall Berman takes account of the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world and the impact of modernism on art, literature and architecture. This new edition contains an updated preface addressing the critical role the onset of modernism played in popular democratic upheavals in the late 1920s.

    He provides an extraordinary mediation upon the nature of place, time and our daily lives.