Paris captures everyone's imaginations: It's a backdrop for Proust's fictional pederast, Robert Doisneau's photographic kiss, and Edith Piaf's serenaded soldier-lovers; a home as much to romance and love poems as to prostitution and opium dens. The many pieces of the city coexist, each one as real as the next. What's more, the conflicted identity of the city is visible everywhere—between cobblestones, in bars, on the métro.In this lively and lucid volume, Andrew Hussey brings to life the urchins and artists who've left their marks on the city, filling in the gaps of a history that affected the disenfranchised as much as the nobility. Paris: The Secret History ranges across centuries, movements, and cultural and political beliefs, from Napoleon's overcrowded cemeteries to Balzac's nocturnal flight from his debts. For Hussey, Paris is a city whose long and conflicted history continues to thrive and change. The book's is a picaresque journey through royal palaces, brothels, and sidewalk cafés, uncovering the rich, exotic, and often lurid history of the world's most beloved city.

    From China to Celtic lands, warriors, priestesses, and matriarchs come to life in this accessible and dramatic account of one archaeologist's search for the truth. Jeannine Davis-Kimball, a real-life Indiana Jones, recounts her exciting and dangerous career uncovering the real story behind Amazons, banshees, and mummies. Within all these groups, Davis-Kimball has uncovered an entire ancient class of courageous women who played vital and respected roles. "Warrior Women" is the first mainstream book to explore the lost world of women warriors that stretches from Europe to Asia. What emerges is not only a thrilling and exotic ride, but a provocative re-examination of gender roles for the 21st century.

    While the fall of the Roman Empire and the exploits of Julius Caesar might be common knowledge, we don't seem to remember too much about the lives of common people in Ancient Rome and Greece. For instance, why didn't they wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to survive surgery? And, what were their parties really like? Most books on the Roman Empire deal with famous figures or events, but Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants focuses on things that seldom appear in history books: myths and magic, barbers and birth control, fine wine and the daily grind. This book, based on questions Roman historian Garrett Ryan, PhD gets most often on Quora and the popular Reddit forum, AskHistorians, reveals the nitty gritty details on how Romans and Greeks lived in a series of short and engaging essays, organized into six categories: Daily Life, Society, Beliefs, Sports and Leisure, and Legacies. Whatever your level of ancient acumen, discover how the Ancient Romans did things when in Ancient Rome with answers to these questions and more! Why didn't the Greeks or Romans wear pants? Did they wear underwear? How did they shave? Did they practice surgery? What were the greatest delicacies? What kinds of pets did they have? How tall were they? How dangerous were their cities? Did they believe in ghosts, or aliens? What did their exercise regimen look like? How did they capture animals for the Colosseum? What happened to the City of Rome after the Roman Empire collapsed? Can any modern families trace their ancestry back to the Ancient Greeks or Romans?

    Arthur Evans discovered what he believed was the palace of King Minos, with its notorious labyrinth, home of the Minotaur. As a result, Evans became obsessed with one of the epic intellectual stories of the modern era: the search for the meaning of Linear B, the mysterious script found on clay tablets in the ruined palace.Evans died without achieving his objective, and it was left to the enigmatic Michael Ventris to crack the code in 1952. This is the first book to tell not just the story of Linear B but also that of the young man who deciphered it. Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and contradictory man. Stage by stage, we see how Ventris finally achieved the breakthrough that revealed Linear B as the earliest comprehensible European writing system.

    150 and c. 750, came to differ from "Classical civilization."These centuries, as the author demonstrates, were the era in which the most deeply rooted of ancient institutions disappeared for all time. By 476 the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655 the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East.Peter Brown, Professor of History at Princeton University, examines these changes and men's reactions to them, but his account shows that the period was also one of outstanding new beginnings and defines the far-reaching impact both of Christianity on Europe and of Islam on the Near East. The result is a lucid answer to a crucial question in world history; how the exceptionally homogeneous Mediterranean world of c. 200 became divided into the three mutually estranged societies of the Middle Ages: Catholic Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam. We still live with the results of these contrasts.

    Even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles & flaws, they proved to be survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympians claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink & sex. Under Christianity & Islam they survived as demons, allegories & planets. In the Renaissance, they reemerged as ambassadors of a new, secular belief in humanity. Their geographic range, too, has been astounding. In their exile, the gods of Olympus have traveled east to the walls of cave temples in China, west to colonize the Americas. They snuck into Italian cathedrals, haunted Nietzsche & visited Borges' restless dreams. In an original history, Graziosi offers the 1st account to trace the wanderings of these protean deities thru the millennia. Drawing on a wide range of literary & archeological sources, The Gods of Olympus opens a window on the ancient world & its lasting influence.Preface: Simonides Was WiseIntroduction: A Family PortraitPart I. Birth: Archaic Greece Part II. Dialogue: Classical AthensPart III. Travel: Hellenistic EgyptPart IV. Translation: the Roman EmpirePart V. Disguise: Christianity &IslamPart VI. Born again: the RenaissanceEpilogue: A Marble HeadAppendix: The Twelve GodsList of IllustrationsNotes & Further ReadingAcknowledgmentsIndex

    The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

    But this is not the whole story.Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered. She explores what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, revealing an alternative view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded.

    Democritus's atomic theory of matter, Zeno's dazzling "proofs" that motion is impossible, Pythagorean insights into mathematics, Heraclitus's haunting and enigmatic epigrams-all form part of a revolution in human thought that relied on reasoning, forged the first scientific vocabulary, and laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Jonathan Barnes has painstakingly brought together the surviving Presocratic fragments in their original contexts, utilizing the latest research and a newly discovered major papyrus of Empedocles.

    Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.

    McRaven, US Navy (Ret.). The most moving and powerful war stories ever told, by the men and women who lived them.*Walk in my Combat Boots* is a powerful collection crafted from hundreds of original interviews by James Patterson, the world’s #1 bestselling writer, and First Sergeant US Army (Ret.) Matt Eversmann, part of the Ranger unit portrayed in the movie *Black Hawk Down*.These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms. Here, in the voices of the men and women who’ve fought overseas from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, is a rare eye-opening look into what wearing the uniform, fighting in combat, losing friends and coming home is *really* like. Readers who next thank a military member for their service will finally have a true understanding of what that thanks is for

    O’Donnell is a “vigorous” (Kirkus Reviews) and “richly layered” (Publishers Weekly) history of Rome’s fall. Renowned historian and author of Augustine, O’Donnell revisits this ancient tale in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to today’s political issues.

    Whether it's Ikaros flying too close to the sun, Prometheus stealing fire from the gods or the tragedy of Oedipus, their characters have inspired art, literature, plays and films, and constellations named after them fill the night sky. But how much do you really know about them?From the clash of the Titans to the fall of Troy, here are the greatest legends of all time, brilliantly retold by classical scholar Jenny March. All the heroes, monsters, villains, gods and goddesses of classical civilization are included; the epic journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas; the founding of Athens and Rome; the quests of Jason seeking the Golden Fleece and Theseus slaying the minotaur. Giving the origins, development and interpretation of each myth, this is the essential guide to the stories that have shaped our world.

    A crowd of onlookers gathered around a slave driver. The wondrous plenty of banquets where flamingos are roasted whole and wine flows like rivers. The silence of the baths and the boisterous taverns . . . Many books have dealt with the history of ancient Rome, but none has been able to bring its readers so near to daily life in the Imperial capital. This extraordinary voyage of exploration, guided by Alberto Angela with the charm of a born story- teller, lasts twenty- four hours, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115 A.D., with Imperial Rome at the height of its power. The reader wakes in a rich patrician home and discovers frescoes, opulent furnishings and richly appointed boudoirs. Strolling though the splendors of the Roman Forum, one overhears both erudite opinions from learned orators and local ribaldry floating out from the public latrines. One meets the intense gazes of Roman matriarchs strolling the streets, looks on as a banquet is prepared, and is afforded a peek into the sexual habits and fetishes of Roman patricians and plebs. For all those who have ever dreamed of traveling back in time, Alberto Angela's narrative style will come as a welcome change to dry historical tomes. Rich in atmosphere and historical information, A Day in Ancient Rome is a voyage into a world both distant to us in time and surprisingly near in its habits, mores, and passions.

    For the next three hundred years the Greeks controlled a complex of monarchies and city-states that stretched from the Adriatic Sea to India. F. W. Walbank's lucid and authoritative history of that Hellenistic world examines political events, describes the different social systems and mores of the people under Greek rule, traces important developments in literature and science, and discusses the new religious movements.