Christopher Columbus did more than discover a new world. He changed the Old World. Through his adventures, he launched Europe's most powerful nations into an era of exploration and colonization - and, in the process, touched off a brutal period of genocide and slavery that would continue for centuries. But while we all think we know everything we need to know about Columbus, he remains an enigmatic figure. Only scholars are familiar with some parts of his remarkable life. Here, from histor...

Leonardo da Vinci personified the Renaissance, the extraordinary age in which he lived. Best known as one of the world's greatest painters, he sketched the foundations for inventions that would not come to fruition for centuries. Born a bastard in a hillside village in northern Italy, Leonardo became the protégé of princes, popes, and kings. He mastered so many branches of science that scholars still debate whether he was greater as an anatomist, botanist, cartographer, engineer, geographe...

A nuanced, science-based understanding of the creative mind that dispels the pervasive myths we hold about the human brain—but also uncovers the truth at their cores.What is the relationship between creativity and madness? Creativity and intelligence? Do psychedelics truly enhance creativity? How should we understand the left and right hemispheres of the brain? Is the left brain, in fact, the seat of reasoning and the right brain the seat of creativity? These are j...

The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anth...

What happens in our brains when we compose a melody, write a poem, paint a picture, or choreograph a dance sequence? How is this different from what occurs in the brain when we generate a new theory or a scientific hypothesis? In this book, Anna Abraham reveals how the tools of neuroscience can be employed to uncover the answers to these and other vital questions. She explores the intricate workings of our creative minds to explain what happens in our brains when we operate in a creative m...

This compilation of original research articles highlight the important cross-regional, cross-chronological, and comparative approaches to political and economic landscapes in ancient South Asia and its neighbors. Focusing on the Indus Valley period and Iron Age India, this volume incorporates new research in South Asia within the broader universe of archaeological scholarship. Contributions focus on four major themes: reinterpreting material culture; identifying domains and regional bounda...

Alexander the Great has fascinated people for centuries - and still does. Here, from award-winning historian and journalist Charles Mercer, is the story of the military genius who became a king at twenty told with all the color and drama characteristic of Alexander's time.

For two weeks in the summer of 1945, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Josef Stalin gathered to reconstruct the world out of the ruins of World War II. They met "only a few miles," as President Truman noted, "from the war-shattered seat of Nazi power" - around a baize-covered table in the Cecilienhof Palace at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. The Allied powers had met twice before, engaging in the cordial horse-trading of properties and promises, to perpetuate a united military front agains...

Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, in a few favored areas of the world, humankind mastered the formulas that released it from the Stone Age. For the first time in history, people became civilized. This globe- and time-trotting book vividly describes how a number of major civilizations - the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Khmers, the Etruscans, and more - emerged, thrived, faded, but left a mark on our collective imagination and culture. Memories of some of these civilizations linger in the for...

The relationship between Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton is like that of two complementary stages of a rocket. Galileo, the argumentative "wrangler" who demanded that the universe be examined through a telescope rather than by means of a philosophy book, provided the first liftoff, and Newton, the secretive mathematician who searched among his notes to find a mislaid proof for universal gravitation, put the world into orbit. Here, from award-winning journalist William Bixby, are their sto...

"Every man has two countries," Henri de Bornier once said, "his own and France." Indeed, France has captivated us for centuries. Here, in this compelling history from acclaimed historian Marshall B. Davison, is its story: from prehistory to its conquest by Julius Caesar; from its invasion by the Franks, who gave us the name we use today, to the reign of Charlemagne; from the rule of the Bourbon monarchs, who reached their apex under the Sun King, Louis XIV, to the bloody days of the French...

Here, award-winning historian Charles L. Mee Jr. explores life in Renaissance Italy - from the ascendancy of Florence and the Medicis to the genius of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Through wars and violence to festivals and feasts, Mee examines the people - artists, clergy, courtiers, merchants, scholars, and women - who fashioned the cradle for the rebirth of the Western world.