(Part 3) Best history of civilization & culture books according to redditors
We found 681 Reddit comments discussing the best history of civilization & culture books. We ranked the 122 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
Also, fur, with the fur turned in, next to the body. You get an amazing amount of warmth next to the body, try it. Layers, lots of layers, look at some Renaissance outfits, they wore a lot of layers for many reasons, one was warmth. (A lot of Rennies complain that historically accurate Renaissance clothing is very hot because of all the layers and the fabrics.) That was the during Little Ice Age, people were cold. So, lots of layers, fur, wool, keeping dry kept people from freezing to death. (It was not always cold, previous to the Little Ice Age the climate was relatively warm.) Staying inside a warmish, somewhat windproof structure helped. Housing and warming technologies greatly improved during the Little Ice Age, they had to!
Cotton is not good for warmth. It absorbs sweat and keeps it next to the body, making it colder. (Cotton was relatively rare in the past, in our current times, cotton is ubiquitous, but it will not keep you as warm as wool or other animal products.) Wool wicks sweat away from the body. A dry body is easier to keep warm than a damp body.
Even with all this, people were cold. The idea was not to be "warm," but to not freeze to death so one could make it to the spring.
Sorry for being so Euro-centric, but that is what I know.
A couple of the books I have read on the subject:
The Little Ice Age
The Long Summer
Not to mention none of those things have been stable over time. This will get lost, but Norbert Elias wrote a famous book called The Civilizing Process. Basically, what counts as decency is part of the evolution of statehood. For this discussion, though, manners and culture have changed enormously. It used to be no thing to dump a bucket of shit out of your window and into the street. No thing at all. Actually shitting in the street was only marginally rude. Now that would get you arrested.
You were capable of understanding all the 'issues' regarding religious belief at 13? A. N. Wilson is a British intellectual and writer, and personal friend of Christopher Hitchens. He was an avowedly militant atheist all throughout the 80s and 90s, writing several pamphlets, and even a highly recommendable book entitled God's Funeral where he goes through the entire history of western philosophical religious criticism. Then a few years ago he openly converted back to Christianity. So you'll have to excuse me if I pour plenty of scorn on your "I was a very smart teen".
And I just realized that your'e still a high school student who hasn't even gone to college yet. I was also an angry teenaged atheist once.
Just some advice for the future, don't label yourself anything until you're 28. I did, and I wouldn't recommend it.
I love gnosticism. I'm currently reading The Secret Teachers of the Western World by Gary Lachman, which is a great overview of the Western esoteric tradition. If I didn't have to work for a living I'd probably be squirreled away in a laboratory somewhere trying to turn lead into gold. I love alchemy, gnosticism, neoplatonism, rosicrucianism, all that kind of stuff.
Adding to what the other have said I'll link to the /r/askhistorians books and resources list. I think what you are looking for can be found in the general category
From this I read McKay so I'll copy the description from that one:
> A History of Western Society by McKay, Hill and others, 2008: A good overview, picks up where The Human Past left off (with an overlap in antiquity) and provides the historical, rather than archaeological, perspective. Very readable, and though it's a textbook and thus most suitable for students (with plenty of 'summaries' and lists of important key words), I'd still recommend it to people who are interested in history without having access to the formal education (and to archaeologists who only study prehistory!).
It's a big book (more than a thousand page) and because it was meant for students it has many summaries and even some onine multiple choice tests. I'll link to an image of the index page so you get an idea of the contents:
1 and 2
Edit: I will say that this book has a bit of the classic western bias (kind of obvious with the name) and it follows the classic line of Mesopotamia > Egyptians > Greeks > Romans > Middle Ages > Renaissance and Enlightenment. And it's more focussed on recent history so if you are more interested in ancient history then you might want to look more towards one of the other books on that list.
Okay, this is still a very broad question, but one of the best experts to go to on this subject (in my opinion) is professor Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Wallace is currently heading up the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts where he and his team are compiling all known ancient manuscripts and digitally photographing and labeling them so that other scholars can study and read them online. In the process of doing this, he and his team are discovering a number of previously unknown manuscripts (for instance, a possible 1st century fragment of Mark that will be published in scholarly journals this year).
In this talk on the subject, Dr. Wallace mentions Metzger's thorough and extensive academic-leaning work Canon of the New Testament, and the cheaper, more popular level book Reinventing Jesus co-authored by Wallace, J. Ed Komoszewski, and M. James Sawyer. You might also be in interested in Dr. Wallace's New Testament: Introductions and Outlines where he goes into both critical and tradtional examinations of the NT and their inclusion into the canon.
For just a basic outline on canonicity of the NT, most of the books of the NT had to be early (so published in or around the 1st century), had to be authored by an Apostle or someone close to the Apostles. Early on there wasn't much concern for canonicity in the early church. Most of the early church used the Septuagint as their Bible, and just didn't think of the later writings in quite the same way as we do, but they recognized their inspirational nature and valued them. Then a heretic named Marcion came along and formed his own canon. He felt that the God of the Old Testament was evil, and so decided to remove anything pro-Jewish, he reworked Luke, and did a number of other things. The early church was pretty freaked out about this, and decided that they needed to compile an authoritative list of books/letters to ward off heretical manipulation of what had already been received as inspired and authoritative.
One of the early examples we have of the early canon can be found in the Muratorian fragment dating to approx. 170 AD. It includes most of the books of the NT excluding James, Hebrews, and 1 and 2 Peter. A number of the ECFs (early church fathers... important post-Apostolic Christian writers) mention the authoritative books of the NT by name. The Gospels are mostly anonymous (there are a few internal indicators in Luke and John about who authored them), but the ECFs handed down to us the authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. No other authors in the ancient writings were substituted for the name of the traditional authors. By the time Constantine came into power, and made Christianity the state religion, the canon had been closed and pretty much all the major books accepted for a long time with a little bit of disagreement between books like Revelation and Hebrews and a couple of the Pastorals. A number of councils in the 4th century pretty much settled the matter. The earliest complete manuscript copies we have date from around this period as well, so Codex Vaticanus 325-350, Codex Sinaiticus in 330-360, Codex Alexandrinus 400-440, Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus 450.
Something else should be mentioned about the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke share many commonalities with one another. So much so, that most scholars believe these books depend on one another in some way. These Gospels are called "synoptic", that is syn-together, or same and opsis-view (like where we get the word "optic" for optic nerve). John is so unlike the synoptics that he's usually handled separately from them, and is also considered later than the others.
Now these similarities aren't so surprising with Luke, Luke tells us that his book is a compilation of testimony (Luke 1:1-4), but that doesn't really explain, for instance, how Matthew is so similar to Mark.
An early church father named Eusebius quotes from an earlier Bishop named Papias about the compilation of the Gospels. Papias lived in the 1st and early 2nd century, and was a student or a hearer of the Apostle John. Papias says,
>Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took special care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. [This is what is related by Papias regarding Mark; but with regard to Matthew he has made the following statements]: Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could. [The same person uses proofs from the First Epistle of John, and from the Epistle of Peter in like manner. And he also gives another story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is to be found in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.]
Many modern scholars don't exactly agree with Papias' rendition of things though. The prevailing theory in academia today is the source theory, and in particular the source theory called Markan Priority. Basically its argued that Mark is the simplest, and thus earliest of the synoptics, and that Matthew and Luke knew of and borrowed from Mark as a source for their books. But there also commonalities in Luke and Matthew that are not found in Mark, so its theorized that along with Mark there was probably another book or at least a common tradition shared between them that has since been lost to history. This book or sayings have been labeled "Q", which comes from the German word "quelle", which means "source". ALSO, Matthew, Mark and Luke have completely original material that they share with no other books. Now, there are some scholars (currently in the minority) that buck against this source hypothesis, that reject Q, and suggest Matthean priority. Basically Matthew was first, and Mark borrowed from Matthew, and Luke borrowed from Mark and Matthew. This is called Augustinian Hypothesis.
As for the Old Testament, that's a whole nother story. The OT was compiled throughout centuries. It should probably be kept in mind that academia for the OT is very very secular compared to that of the NT. I'm not really sure what the poster US_Hiker was on about in his reply to you, but anyways, its theorized that the books of the OT weren't written and edited in the periods they claim to be written and edited. The prevailing theory for the OT is called the Documentary Hypothesis. For a long time, the accepted hypothesis was labeled JEPD, and this stands for the following sources: Yahwist (or Jawist), Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly. Its a pretty confusing theory that says that writers of the Old Testament regularly redacted and changed the order of the OT during different periods. And that the OT was compiled from approx. 950-500 BC. The theory has been manipulated and altered a number of times, especially when embarrassing archaeological finds like the silver scrolls found at Ketef Hinnom pushed some writings far further back than were expected by scholars. In my opinion, a great, very thorough, slightly academic book to read on modern theories about the Old Testament would be professor Richard S. Hess' Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey.
Concerning archaeological finds, or the lack thereof for say, the Exodus, I think one's presuppositions have a lot to do with what you accept or not. If you're an unbelieving archaeologist, you might expect to find some noticeable traces of an enormous group of people wandering the desert for 40 years. So far, we can't find any. But, if you're a believer who agrees with Genesis that God provided for these people with manna from heaven that rotted away if stored up, or of clothes that miraculously never wore out, then you're not going to find a whole lot in a desert. There are a handful of scholars that also believe the entire Egyptian dating system that scholars use as a measuring tool for the pre-Roman world is off by a few dynasties. One of the better known archaeologists known for his new chronology of the Egyptian period is egyptologist David Rohl. His ideas are currently on the fringe, but seem to be gaining some traction. His book Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest is a beautiful and very interesting book on the subject.
Ok, so, sorry that was so long, but like I said, this is a very very broad subject. If you have any questions, let me know.
Have a terrific day!
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.com
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amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
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amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
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The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee, read by Dennis Boutsikaris.
I really enjoyed this one - it is a wide-ranging history of biology all the way from Aristotle through Mendel, Darwin, Watson and Crick, and up to current studies of epigenetics and genome editing. It's very well-written and a fun listen - never too dry or scientific. It weaves in stories about science's impact on society - there was an especially gripping section on the history of eugenics in America. There is also a little of the author Mukherjee's personal family history with bipolar and schizophrenia, but I never really got as invested in that part of the story.
I'd highly recommend it for anyone interested in biology. I plan to listen to his previous book 'The Emperor of all Maladies' soon as well.
The narrator of this one was good, although he did have some poor pronunciations of some of the scientific terms which took me out of the story. But overall I really liked this book and it has inspired me to try some other science audiobooks in the future.
the contradictions and inefficiencies of the larger (government) systems is such a joke. I know that many of the waste management agencies, Rumpke.com, being my local provider (there are three in my city, Rumpke, Waste Management, and City of Louisville(ky)) does composting with all the yard waste it gets from people. I believe they feed it back into the city for parks and public spaces, etc, or for cover for their landfills.... or, hell, they sell it for a profit.
Compost is relatively expensive. The whole idea of soil healthy really intrigues me. In fact, I'm very heavily researching getting into the business of this. I am a builder and have had a 'dirt' problem. When we dig basements or clear land, the dirt that we don't use to level the property and grade it to make it finish nicely, we have to dump. I have free places to dump it, no problem, but it hit me when scouring Craigslist farm&garden section one night... I could sell the dirt. (to be fair, its more I'm charging for the service, costs, labor, etc than actually selling the dirt but....) Since summer, I've averaged probably $1,000 a month just selling dirt.
Doesn't sound like a lot but, the housing business is slow here (as everywhere) and I've unfortunately had to let go of a few guys, or move them out to contract/as-needed status because theres just not enough work to keep them busy (and we're pretty inventive)... the extra $1k a month (some months its more) has managed to be a good side job for them. I guess the point is, it wasn't until I started looking into this that I realized how much of a demand for... dirt/soil there is. And, the thing is, its not just dirt, people want all sorts of less traditional services... things that even the local garden shops or nurseries aren't providing.
I had to call ten places before I could find worms for vermiculture.... and, for shits and giggles, I called another ... I'd say it was 25 total, nurseries, garden centers, industrial suppliers, etc... 1 carried worms on a larger level, others thought I was crazy for even asking. but the real kicker was... biochar. I called 25 places (made a list)... of the 25 places, none of them carried biochar, didn't surprise me.. but of the 25 places, 20 acted like i was crazy as in "biochar?!? what the hell is biochar??" crazy. The other 4 were like, no, we don't carry that, maybe next season, but had no clue what I was talking about thinking it was just a brand or a product or something... like miracle grow or brand x product. 1, there was 1 single place that had even heard of it... but sounded extremely interested.
That place is in kind of the 'yuppier' part of town, not the hippy or the new age part, more the... .... the people who would go skiing at Vail, Co like 10-15 years ago. Nothing against them, great people, its to say that of all of the people, they were the ones who took the time to keep up with it (they also had worms = ) and even they didn't carry it.
I've read the moral arguments, technical arguments, etc of biochar, most of it really disagreeing with it on an industrial level relating to saving the environment... but zoom out and look at it just as soil remediation and health and it seems to work even better than compost.
I, personally, think that a combination of compost, biochar, and vermiculture (even if all created from just the waste every year) could easily turn the health of both our foods and our environment around that, if done just on a recycling sort of way, could and would drastically cut down on the amount of money that needs be spent on petroleum based fertilizers.
(thats long... I'm going to insert random paragraph breaks just to break that up to make it easier to read.. note the random)
but, in my research about this (and its probably been about 30-40 hours focused (if i read one more phd dissertation I'll go mad) I ran across a book that I want to come back to if/when/as I get the time. (history is a side interest)
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations ... no particular loyalty to amazon just the first place on the list it showed up
also, I found a movie (with a nice youtube clip preview) that I plan on ordering at about the same time (you might find it interesting too...)
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/
If you really want to know and can read better than a five year old, what you really want is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Mapmakers-Revised-John-Noble-Wilford/dp/0375708502/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381273297&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mapmakers+the+story+of+the+great+pioneers
Your local public library should have it. Great book. A very nice mixture of non-fiction information with enough fun anecdotes about those pioneers to keep the book lively.
I recommend The Ultimate Cannon of Knowledge by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, The Secret Teachers of the Western World by Gary Lachman and The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
The following books are taken from the General section of our books and resources list:
I'm sure more books can be found in the book list.
Happy reading :)
It is historical consensus that the Viking Rus' caught "slavs" in what is today Russia, and then sold them through on the Eastern slave markets, and that's where the name comes from.
Peter Frankopan dedicated a chapter to this slave trade in his The Silk Roads.
On page 117 he writes (yes, you made me walk up to my library):
> The Rus' were ruthless when it came to enslaving local populations and transporting them south. [...] So many were captured that the very name of those taken captive — Slavs — became used for all those who had their freedom taken away: slaves.
Also here:
> "Therefore, the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe were for a long period an obvious target for European and Nordic slave traders. It is from this area that the term “slave” originates." Source
I agree. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't Ishmael that was sent to Dan, but rather Beyond Civilization, which to be fair, is kind of a terrible book. But nonetheless, it really does bother me the way he was treated because his books Ishmael, My Ishmael, and Providence collectively rocked my world. I wish someone could give Dan a proper context for what Quinn's doing.
Might be over a little too academic, but try:
http://www.amazon.com/Civilizing-Process-Sociogenetic-Psychogenetic-Investigations/dp/0631221611/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321342297&sr=8-1
I enjoy critiques of intellectuals and learning relations between them. You should also check out The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism by him. Mark Lilla is very similar, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics and The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction Of course philosophers and politics would be very lacking without Isaiah Berlin Also Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: The Thinkers of The New Left is very good. Lastly The Opium of Intellectuals of Raymon Aron is a must-read classic.
"The Silk Roads: A New History of the World"
https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World/dp/1101912375
Best book I read in 2018
(Serious Answer)
Read Beyond Civilization, learn to forage, learn cultivation, learn to hunt, learn how to start fire.
Learn survival skills.
read this
Well, then I recommend you read this book so that you'll ready for the possible coming apocalypse: The Little Ice Age.
It's a great read. You can follow it up with this: The Long Summer.
This makes me think of an enjoyable book I just finished reading: "The Perfectionists," history of precision engineering by Simon Winchester. Link below. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072BFJB3Z/
Wes mentioning Sapiens By Yuval Noah Harari was definitely a huge highlight for this podcast! Great book looking forward to reading his other book homo deus. Links below for those interested:
https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/B0741F3M7C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527192894&sr=8-1&keywords=sapiens
https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/B01MYZ4OUW/ref=pd_sim_129_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01MYZ4OUW&pd_rd_r=4FV7QJFXX07PXESEFHKD&pd_rd_w=Ze5JD&pd_rd_wg=vDsKL&psc=1&refRID=4FV7QJFXX07PXESEFHKD
Here is the mobile version of your link
The Map Makers
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 --Charles Murray
Fair enough, but there are also books that simply talk about atheism without having a strong agenda in either direction. One of my favorite books ever is God's Funeral https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Funeral-Decline-Western-Civilization/dp/0393047458 which gives an objective history about how Western society has moved away from religion, and how atheism has manifested itself in art, academia, and philosophy. The entire time I was reading it I was also trying to figure out whether or not the author intended to promote or argue against it all, but I never could. That's actually one of my favorite things about it.
Also I think your argument only goes so far. Books like God is not great https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966 do spend a lot of time talking about religion, but they spend more time promoting things like reason and critical thinking, only using religion as proof to the points, and not giving it the objective or in depth coverage of any real "study".
Reviews here: http://www.amazon.com/Human-Accomplishment-Pursuit-Excellence-Sciences/dp/006019247X
Sample:
>- Some readers with extensive statistics backgrounds may attack the techniques used, especially those used later in the book in determining rates of accomplishment, but with my limited background (one year of undergraduate statistics courses at MIT, and a semester of statistics for research in grad school) Murray's methodology looks bulletproof.
> To this point, even multiculturalists should be happy, since no attempt is made to compare the accomplishments of western and non-western civilizations. Now, however, he lobs the baseball into the hornets' nest. He concludes that dead European white guys have done the best work in the sciences, that Jews are dramatically overrepresented as a percentage of total population, that women have not contributed at the expected rates even after sexist barriers were removed, and that significant contributions in non-western arts have not been made at the same rates as in the west.
NYT review: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/books/review/charles-murray-examines-the-white-working-class-in-coming-apart.html?pagewanted=all
Velikovsky argued that ancient Egyptian history has about 500 imaginary years in it, so that events we think happened 1500 BCE really happened 1000 BCE (see his Ages in Chaos, Peoples of the Sea, etc.). There are serious problems with Velikovsky’s revised chronology, but he seems on the right track in very many respects. An alternative revised chronology is that of David Rohl in his Pharaohs and Kings/A Test of Time: http://www.amazon.com/Pharaohs-Kings-A-Biblical-Quest/dp/0609801309. Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChfcfOVPS0Q.
I would also like to give a small US history lesson. As industrialization drove local farmers to plant more intensely, soil exhaustion ended up driving western expansion. Here is an interesting book on the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/product-description/0520258061
In other words, IMHO once population really increased and population density increased and the world moved toward industrialization, the need for agricultural yield densities drove the need for a different way of fertilizing (managing) the soil. As Borlaug states, there is not enough fertilizer produced through natural means to support a true change to organic fertilizer.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up! The book is $36 on Amazon but, a quick search produced this pdf for anyone that's interested.
That book is on my reading list, I would be in if you, or anyone else interested, can set up a good way to run a discussion.
If you don't want to spend any money and you have a kindle, there is a free kindle edition on Amazon.