A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world historyThis book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the...

Since its initial publication, The Civilizationsof Africa has established itself as the most authoritative text available on early African history. Addressing the glaring lack of works concentrating on earlier African eras, Christopher Ehret’s trailblazing book has been paired with histories of Africa since 1800 to build a full and well-rounded understanding of the roles of Africa’s peoples in human history. Examining inventions and civilizations from 22,000 BCE to 1800 CE, Ehret ...

This book is about history and the practical power of language to reveal historical change. Christopher Ehret offers a methodological guide to applying language evidence in historical studies. He demonstrates how these methods allow us not only to recover the histories of time periods and places poorly served by written documentation, but also to enrich our understanding of well-documented regions and eras. A leading historian as well as historical linguist of Africa, Ehret provides in-dep...

The award-winning author of The Way of the Gladiator brings to life medieval Paris and the wolves who held it hostage, in this novel based on real events.Praised as "nature writing at its best," The Wolves of Paris takes readers to fifteenth-century France, a country so decimated by the Hundred Years' War that its people became prey for marauding wolf packs ( Hartford Courant). With France split among the English, the Burgundians, and the ...

**Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award · Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award · A Library Journal Best History Book of the YearA definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad’s long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent scholar of Atlantic history and the award-winning author of The Slave Ship**As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellu...

**An urgent exploration of a world in constant crisis, where every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict, with lessons from history that can stop the spiral—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography“Compelling and helpful . . . Kaplan’s analysis has enormous implications for U.S. strategy abroad. . . . His conclusion is the only right one.”—John Bolton, The Wall Street Journal**One of Fina...

**AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!An ode to triangles, the shape that makes our lives possible**Trigonometry is perhaps the most essential concept humans have ever devised. The simple yet versatile triangle allows us to record music, map the world, launch rockets into space, and be slightly less bad at pool. Triangles underpin our day-to-day lives and civilization as we know it.In Love Triangle, Matt Parker argues we should all show a lot more...

An “UNEXPECTEDLY PROFOUND,” “DEEPLY STRANGE,” and “UTTERLY UNIQUE tour of the human body” (Publishers Weekly)"A must read for anyone who’s ever been amazed or aghast at what just came out." — Rachel Yoder, author of NightbitchTo live, our bodies must continuously shed materials. Stop urinating, stop defecating, stop expelling breath, and death is near. While we often think of these materials as embarrassing waste products, they serve far more complex functions. The color of...

**ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW  EDITORS' CHOICE PICK AND 2024 NOTABLE BOOKAN NPR FAVORITE READ OF 2024“Peri’s joint biography is a thrilling, haunting yarn of the sort that the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson himself became famous for—and couldn’t have written without his wife.” —The AtlanticThe extraordinary story of the creative and romantic partnership between Robert Louis Stev...

From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life imageMartin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portraye...

A riveting, deeply researched, blood-on-the-spurs biography of Belle Starr, the most legendary female outlaw of the American West.On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr”—was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended...

“Fascinating.” — The Wall Street Journal“An enlightening portrait of the medieval mindset.” — Publishers WeeklyThe authors of The Bright Ages return with a “real-life Game of Thrones”(New York Times Book Review)—the story of the Carolingian Civil War, a bloody, protracted battle pitting brother against brother, father against son, that would end an empire, upend a continent, and redefine ...