Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Toward Civilization
Download Toward Civilization full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Toward Civilization ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Twilight of a Great Civilization by : Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry
Download or read book Twilight of a Great Civilization written by Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry and published by Crossway. This book was released on 1988 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critiques the moral and intellectual disintegration sweeping our culture. A call to make a lasting imprint on our age.
Download or read book Abundant Earth written by Eileen Crist and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.
Download or read book Civilization written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
Book Synopsis Enemies of Civilization by : Mu-chou Poo
Download or read book Enemies of Civilization written by Mu-chou Poo and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enemies of Civilization is a work of comparative history and cultural consciousness that discusses how "others" were perceived in three ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Each civilization was the dominant culture in its part of the world, and each developed a mind-set that regarded itself as culturally superior to its neighbors. Mu-chou Poo compares these societies' attitudes toward other cultures and finds differences and similarities that reveal the self-perceptions of each society. Notably, this work shows that in contrast to modern racism based on biophysical features, such prejudice did not exist in these ancient societies. It was culture rather than biophysical nature that was the most important criterion for distinguishing us from them. By examining how societies conceive their prejudices, this book breaks new ground in the study of ancient history and opens new ways to look at human society, both ancient and modern.
Book Synopsis Toward Civilization by : Charles Austin Beard
Download or read book Toward Civilization written by Charles Austin Beard and published by . This book was released on 1930 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the opinions of sixteen scientists and engineers constituting a survey of modern technologies and a defense of our machine age.
Book Synopsis Toward Civilization by : National Endowment for the Arts
Download or read book Toward Civilization written by National Endowment for the Arts and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Energy and Civilization by : Vaclav Smil
Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Book Synopsis Byzantine Civilisation by : James Cochran Stevenson Runciman
Download or read book Byzantine Civilisation written by James Cochran Stevenson Runciman and published by Plume Books. This book was released on 1974-02 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dirt written by David R. Montgomery and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Book Synopsis The Origins of Civilization by : Peter Roger Stuart Moorey
Download or read book The Origins of Civilization written by Peter Roger Stuart Moorey and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1979 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by leading scholars of archaeology and prehistory examines the emergence of permanent human settlements and the social, political, and religious ideas that may have accompanied this development. Two introductory lectures sketch the emergence of man and his development as hunter, farmer, and fisherman. Then, taking civilization in its most precise sense, separate essays review the evolution of urban societies in the Near East, Europe, China, and Mesoamerica. Final lectures address the role of religion in early human societies, and the development of writing in the Old World. This disinguished and highly accessible collection will appeal to both the specialist and the interested general reader.
Book Synopsis Putting Philosophy to Work by : Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Download or read book Putting Philosophy to Work written by Wm. Andrew Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 2015, a conference was held in Claremont, CA. Called Seizing an Alternative, the conference had one overarching goal: to bring together the best minds from as many fields as possible, both practical and academic, to confront the disastrous consequences of the Western worldview¿¿¿the most urgent of which is climate change¿¿¿and to offer an alternative. The alternative proposed by presenters was the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and their hope was that those persuaded by it would bring that understanding back to their professions, their disciplines, their settings. In short, the goal was to transform the way we think. But what is process philosophy? The twelve essays in this book were designed not only to answer the what, but also to demonstrate the how and why¿how process philosophy provides a practical answer to so many of the potentially catastrophic issues now facing us, and why the alternative of an organic, relational, integrated, nondual, and processive conceptuality is so urgently needed. In embracing Whitehead as ¿the philosopher of ecological civilization,¿ the authors also position themselves on the side of hope¿not of the Pollyanna sort, but the kind that takes a clear-eyed look at what seems to be impossible and wrests from it what may yet be possible.
Book Synopsis Journey to Civilization by : Roger Briggs
Download or read book Journey to Civilization written by Roger Briggs and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the world made and how did we get here? All human cultures have ancient accounts of the creation of the Earth, and people, that have been passed down through an oral tradition of storytelling, until they were eventually written down. These traditional comological stories have universally importance: they define our place in the universe and gave meaning to our existence. Journey to Civilization: The Science of How We Got Here reveals a new cosmological story that is based on the evidence and skepticism of science. It explores and explains the science itself, from the physics of stars and the formation of rocky planets, to the evolution of life and the epic journey of humans out of Africa to nearly every continent the Earth. There has never before been one creation story that was shared by all the people of the world. Today, however, nearly all of humanity shares the methods and products of science. Science has become a universal language across all cultures; and thus the new creation story produced by science is the story of all the people of the world. It is the common ground upon which we all stand. Journey to Civilization is written for the non-scientist in clear, straight-forward language, and is richly illustrated with diagrams, charts, and beautiful color graphics and photographs. It will enrich the reader’s understanding of science, and it will change their view of humanity and our place in the universe.
Book Synopsis The Dawn of Everything by : David Graeber
Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations
Book Synopsis Toward a New Civilization by : Arthur Blech
Download or read book Toward a New Civilization written by Arthur Blech and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Civilisation is a term used to describe a superior level of accomplishments of certain nations... We humans are the cause of hazards to our existence created by overpopulation and environmental degradation. We are the designers of an economy that favours the well-to-do to the detriment of the disadvantaged. We are the contrivers of religious systems, some of which are responsible for crimes committed by humans against humans, and last but not least, we are the instigators of mass slaughters resulting from wars fought in anger... These acts bode ill for civilisation... Humanity nevertheless possesses the capacity to free itself from some of the burdens imposed by the natural order. We must discover that our welfare depends on the rejection of the natural order, so as to be freed from the struggle for the survival of the fittest, an order totally in conflict with morality... For the aims of morality are antithetical to nature's imposed scheme of things, reflecting the conflict between our aims and nature's designs..." -- From the Introduction.
Book Synopsis Emerging World: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Future of Humanity by : Roger Briggs
Download or read book Emerging World: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Future of Humanity written by Roger Briggs and published by Atlantic Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is there so much chaos and suffering in the world today? Are we sliding towards dystopia and perhaps extinction, or is there hope for a better future? What happened in the human lineage over the last three million years that made us into a near-geologic force capable of altering the face of our planet and threatening our own existence? In Emerging World, Roger Briggs explores the evolution of consciousness and shows that this is behind everything humans have done, are now doing, and are capable of in the future. By bringing together the best knowledge from paleoanthropology, cultural philosophy, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary theory, Briggs makes the case that humanity is now on the verge of a major transformation, a monumental turning point in our story. Foreseen by many sages and scholars, this anticipated leap promises a new era of history and culture, and a new civilization on Earth in which the needs of all people are met and we become stewards of our living planet. Yet this is by no means guaranteed. Emerging World offers a new understanding of our crisis today and points the way to a bright future for humanity and life on our planet.
Book Synopsis Civilization and Its Discontents by : Sigmund Freud
Download or read book Civilization and Its Discontents written by Sigmund Freud and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Dover thrift editions).
Download or read book The Knowledge written by Lewis Dartnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.
