David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

    And while the world celebrated the extraordinary revelation that gave Carter international renown and an indelible place in history, by the time of his death, the discovery had nearly destroyed him. Now, in a stunning feat of narrative nonfiction, Daniel Meyerson has written a thrilling and evocative account of this remarkable man and his times.Carter began his career inauspiciously. At the age of seventeen–unknown, untrained, untried–he was hired as a copyist of tomb art by the brash, brilliant, and boldly unkempt father of modern archaeology, W. F. Petrie. Carter struck out on his own a few years later, sensing that something amazing lay buried beneath his feet, waiting for him to uncover it.But others had the same idea: The ancient cities of Egypt were crawling with European adventurers and their wealthy sponsors, each hoping to outdo the others with glittering discoveries–even as growing nationalist resentment against foreigners plundering the country’s most treasured antiquities simmered dangerously in the background.Not until Carter met up with the risk-taking, adventure-loving occultist Lord Carnarvon did his fortunes change. There were stark differences in personality and temperament between the cantankerous Carter and his gregarious patron, but together they faced down endless ridicule from the most respected explorers of the day. Seven dusty and dispiriting years after their first meeting, their dream came to astonishing life.But there would be a price to pay for this partnership, their discovery, and the glory and fame it brought both men–and the chain of events that transpired in the wake of their success remains fascinating and shocking to this day.An enthralling story told with unprecedented verve, In the Valley of the Kings is a tale of mania and greed, of fame and lost fortune, of history and its damnations. As he did in The Linguist and the Emperor, Daniel Meyerson puts his exciting storytelling powers on full display, revealing an almost forgotten time when past and present came crashing together with the power to change–or curse–men’s lives.

    Tirelessly trekking across miles of the Thames’ muddy shores, where others only see the detritus of city life, Maiklem unearths evidence of England’s captivating, if sometimes murky, history—with some objects dating back to 43 AD, when London was but an outpost of the Roman Empire. From medieval mail worn by warriors on English battlefields to nineteenth-century glass marbles mass-produced for the nation’s first soda bottles, Maiklem deduces the historical significance of these artifacts with the quirky enthusiasm and sharp-sightedness of a twenty-first century Sherlock Holmes.Seamlessly interweaving reflections from her own life with meditations on the art of wandering, Maiklem ultimately delivers—for Anglophiles and history lovers alike—a memorable treatise on the objects we leave in our wake, and the stories they can reveal if only we take a moment to look.

    As the Roman Empire fights for its life and emerging Christianity fights for our souls, Hypatia is the last great voice of reason. A woman of sublime intelligence, Hypatia ranks above not only all women, but all men. Hypatia dazzled the world with her brilliance, was courted by men of every persuasion and was considered the leading philosopher and mathematician of her age ... yet her mathematics, her inventions, the very story of her life in all its epic and dramatic intensity, has gone untold. A heart-breaking love story, an heroic struggle against intolerance, a tragedy and a triumph, Hypatia walks through these pages fully realized while all around her Egypt's Alexandria, the New York City of its day, strives to remain a beacon of light in a darkening world.

    For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers.On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, he would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom; he would change the world, and the world would destroy him.This is a wild journey through nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne'er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.

    They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.

    Yet the Romans were conquerors, imperialists who took by force a vast empire stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic coast. Ruthless, Romans won peace not through coexistence but through dominance; millions died and were enslaved during the creation of their empire.  Pax Romana examines how the Romans came to control so much of the world and asks whether traditionally favorable images of the Roman peace are true. Goldsworthy vividly recounts the rebellions of the conquered, examines why they broke out, why most failed, and how they became exceeding rare. He reveals that hostility was just one reaction to the arrival of Rome and that from the outset, conquered peoples collaborated, formed alliances, and joined invaders, causing resistance movements to fade away.

    Its purpose—place of worship, sacrificial arena, giant calendar—is unknown, but its story is one of the most extraordinary of any of the world's prehistoric monuments.Constructed in several phases over a period of some 1500 years, beginning in 3000 BC, Stonehenge's key elements are its “bluestones,” transported from West Wales by unexplained means, and its sarsen stones quarried from the nearby Marlborough Downs.Francis Pryor delivers a rigorous account of the nature and history of Stonehenge, but also places the enigmatic monument in a wider cultural context, bringing acute insight into how antiquarians, scholars, writers, artists–and even neopagans—have interpreted the mystery over the centuries.

    Like a real-life version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this incredible story of adventure and mystery has almost been completely forgotten today.In 1908, Monty is approached by a strange Finnish scholar named Valter Juvelius who claims to have discovered a secret code in the Bible that reveals the location of the Ark. Monty assembles a ragtag group of blueblood adventurers, a renowned psychic, and a Franciscan father, to engage in a secret excavation just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.Using recently uncovered records from the original expedition and several newly translated sources, True Raiders is the first retelling of this group's adventures- in the space between fact and faith, science and romance.

    He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock—almost ten thousand books—in attics all over Kabul.But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Åsne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women—including Khan’s two wives—and the freer, more public lives of the men.It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details—a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today’s Afghanistan.'

     Here, from award-winning historian Ian Grey, is its dramatic story - from the establishment of the first ruling dynasty by a Viking prince to the invasions of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan to the rise of the tsars, whose domination of their country stretched nearly four centuries until the violent overthrow of Nicholas II in 1918.

    A hunting and gathering people who made a good living by working only as much as needed to exist in harmony with their hostile desert environment, the Bushmen have lived in southern Africa since the evolution of our species nearly two hundred thousand years ago.In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman asks whether understanding how hunter-gatherers like the Bushmen found contentment by having few needs easily met might help us address some of the environmental and economic challenges we face today. Vividly bringing to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, Affluence Without Abundance tells the story of the collision between the modern global economy and the oldest hunting and gathering society on earth. In rendering an intimate picture of a people coping with radical change, it asks profound questions about how we now think about matters such as work, wealth, equality, contentment, and even time.Not since Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People in 1959 has anyone provided a more intimate or insightful account of the Bushmen or of what we might learn about ourselves from our shared history as hunter-gatherers.

    He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom.Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity--the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.

    . . each of these children has hopes and fears, dreams and beliefs. Their cultures are different, yet in many ways their daily lives are very similar, as are their hopes for the future and their ways of looking at the world.Over the past two years, a photographer and a teacher have traveled to more than 30 countries, meeting and interviewing children. Each child's story is recorded in this remarkable book, published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Extraordinary photographs bring to life the children's families and homes, their clothes and food, their friends and favorite games, and other aspects of their daily lives.The children live in places as diverse as New York, Mongolia, and the Amazon Basin. These are children from both industrialized and developing nations, children from busy cities and remote rural communities, and children from tribal cultures. Their environments include mountains, deserts, rain forests, plains, and polar regions. Most live in families, but Suchart, a novice monk, lives in a monastery, and Tadesse, an Ethiopian boy, lives in an orphanage. Children everywhere will enjoy reading about the lives of these children who share their world.Those who want to make friends with children around the world can join the Children Just Like Me Penpal Club, details of which are included in this book. Part of the Penpal Club membership fee goes to support UNICEF, helping children all over the world.

    In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.The field of archaeology has changed dramatically in the past two decades, as women have challenged their male colleagues' exclusive focus on hard artifacts such as spear points rather than tougher to find evidence of women's work. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer are two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving. In The Invisible Sex, the authors present an exciting new look at prehistory, arguing that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.