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The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance
Jim Al-Khalili · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorGod's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
James Hannam · 441 pages
God's Philosophers is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. --from publisher description.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
David C. Lindberg · 455 pages
Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages
Frances Gies, Joseph Gies · 357 pages
"In this account of Europe's rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies make use of recent scholarship to destroy two time-honored myths. Myth One: that Europe's leap forward occurred suddenly in the "Renaissance," following centuries of medieval stagnation. Not so, say the Gieses: Early modern technology and experimental science were direct outgrowths of the decisive innovati
Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact
John Cornwell · 560 pages
For the first three decades of the twentieth century, Germany held the premier position for science throughout the world. German scientists were the most accomplished and honored in their fields, winning the lion's share of Nobel prizes. But in 1933 came Hitler. Jewish scientists were dismissed from their positions in laboratories and at universities, and the Nazi ideology began to dominate German
Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
Steve Sheinkin · 266 pages
In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German
Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
Jennet Conant · 352 pages
"In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis.
The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
Daniel J. Boorstin · 747 pages
Tells the ongoing story of the progressive discovery by man of the nature of the observable world and universe.
The Last Days of Richard III
John Ashdown-Hill · 190 pages
This book contains details about what Richard III did in his last five months, what happened to his body, and how his DNA was found in Canada. This book explores these events from the standpoint of Richard himself and his contemporaries. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field, this book presents a new Richard - not a passive victim, awaiting
The Invention of Air
Steven Johnson · 254 pages
Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change th
Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air
Richard Holmes · 410 pages
Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air, and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.
Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes
Bertram Fields · 343 pages
In this comprehensive, meticulously researched new book, renowned litigator Bertram Fields goes back more than 500 years to offer a compelling look at the case of Richard III. Applying the same modern techniques he successfully uses in the courtroom, Fields outlines and evaluates the arguments on both sides, weighs the evidence, and offers the definitive truth about this extraordinary man. Fields
Queen Emma: A History of Power, Love, and Greed in 11th-Century England
Harriet O'Brien · 288 pages
The Vikings: A History
Robert Ferguson · 450 pages
Presents a history of the Nordic warriors and explorers who plundered and traded their way across Europe, and discusses how their conquests helped spread and enhance accomplishments in the arts, culture, and government.
The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman
Nancy Marie Brown · 313 pages
Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed past the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, few believed that the details of Gudrid's story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scienti
Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore · 672 pages
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and
A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603
Simon Schama · 356 pages
'The British Wars' is a compelling chronicle of the changes that transformed every strand and strata of British life, faith and thought from 1603 to 1776. It explores the forces that tore Britain apart during two centuries of dynamic change.
Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
Peter Heather · 734 pages
"Here is a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid nar
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie · 383 pages
"Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has had a success which few historians experience and which is usually reserved for the winner of the Prix Goncourt...Montaillou, which is the reconstruction of the social life of a medieval village, has been acclaimed by the experts as a masterpiece of ethnographic history and by the public as a sensational revelation of the thoughts, feelings, and activities of the ordin
The Last Plantagenets
Thomas B. Costain · 424 pages
This, the fourth volume of the author's chronicle of English history entitled The Pageant of England, covers the period from the rule of Richard II to the end of the dynasty in Richard III. A story of intrigue and murder, much of which is still a mystery to historians.