What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities in eras utterly remote from our own? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece to the revolutionary years of the 19th and 20th centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind. He has always...

This is the foundation of all: that we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover what nature does, or may be made to do.'Thus did Francis Bacon, early in the 17th century, outline the future of science and technology. This drive for knowledge and power has now given us a world dominated by science, and this text tells the story of how we have arrived there. The achievements of the great scientific thinkers of the ages Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein, Freud, Hubb...

First Published in 1998. An exploration narrative can be a tale of adventure and endurance, a technical account of navigation and seamanship, or a political history of the overseas empires that were built up in the wake of the explorers.In New Found Lands, Peter Whitfield takes a different approach. By focusing on the maps that the explorers themselves used, Whitfield reveals how the both the explorers and their patrons understood their expanding world and their place in i...

Great poetry can indeed outlast stone and the glory of princes, and the English poetic tradition is perhaps the richest in the world. This ebook tells the story of that tradition through its towering figures Spenser and Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden, Wordsworth and Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson and Eliot and through scores of other poets. Clear and accessible, blending criticism with imagination and illustrated with scores of quotations, this new history will delight all who care about the ...

Charles Darwin, father of evolution, was one of the greatest pioneers in science. His five-year voyage on The Beagle, his visit to the Galapagos Islands, his careful work in noting small differences of fauna on different islands all led to the concept of natural selection, which radically changed the way mankind and the animal world was viewed. But what kind of man was Darwin, and why did he keep his conclusions secret for so many years? In this clear but informative account, Peter Whitfield...

The Renaissance was one of the greatest moments in Western cultural history. It was the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; architects such as Brunelleschi and Palladio; composers such as Palestrina and Tallis; as well as innovative writers and philosophers. It was a time of great social change and remarkable flowering in science, exploration and politics; the age when medieval Christendom was split apart by the Reformation. The printing press played a key role, as did the development...

The fifth in the new Naxos Audiobooks series ‘In a Nutshell’, The Renaissance is a short and accessible introduction to the era that gave us Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Palestrina. The Renaissance swept across Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, heralding intellectual revolutions in science, art, philosophy and politics, and marking a decisive shift towards modern thinking. The authoritative Peter Whitfield brings together all the different threads of this tran...

This is the foundation of all: that we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover what nature does, or may be made to do. Thus did Francis Bacon, early in the 17th century, outline the future of science and technology. This drive for knowledge and power has now given us a world dominated by science, and this audiobook tells the story of how we have arrived there. The achievements of the great scientific thinkers of the ages Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein, Freu...

History or myth? The word of God or the words of men? What is the Bible? This history, especially written for this recording, describes clearly and concisely how the Bible came into being, what it contains and its appearance in the ancient languages of Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. After 400 years, the King James Version remains a religious text and a literary epic, though many other translations before and since William Tyndale, the Good News Bible have influenced generations. This fa...

Abraham Lincoln (18091865) was one of the most influential presidents of the USA, uniting the country and abolishing slavery after a terrible civil war. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, his life and works are presented here in an easy introductory form. Through a balance of biography and the key speeches and letters, the man is brought to life, demonstrating his keen intelligence and determination, which was maintained all the way to his tragic death at the hand of an assassin.

What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age: religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, to the revolutionary years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of...

Naxos AudioBooks launches a new 1 CD introductory series In a Nutshell with Darwin, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of the English naturalist. Peter Whitfield explains how Darwin came to his revolutionary views following his voyage on the Beagle and his initial reluctance to publish his findings.