Bandon Public Library

"The Shortest History of Europe begins with a rapid overview of European civilisation, describing its birth from an unlikely mixture of classical learning, Christianity and German warrior culture. Over the centuries, this unstable blend produced highly distinctive characters - pious knights and belligerent popes, romantics spouting folklore and revolutionaries imitating Rome - and its coming apart provided the dynamic of European history in modern...

Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank embarks on a five-month, 34-country world tour visiting his selection of the 80 greatest buildings, artworks, and other man-made treasures that define human civilization

"The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink and sex. Under Christianity and Islam...

Discusses the history, geography, and people of South Korea as well as the country's rich culture and traditions and its beautiful natural areas.

The Phoenicians is a fascinating exploration of this much-mythologized people: their history, artistic heritage, and the scope of their maritime and colonizing activities in the Mediterranean. Two aspects of the book stand out from other studies of Phoenician history: the source-focused approach and the attention paid to the various ways that biases-ancient and modern-have contributed to widespread misconceptions about who the Phoenicians really were....

"A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world. For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites...

How can a nation that spawned the Renaissance have produced the Mafia? How could people concerned with bella figura (keeping up appearances) have elected Silvio Berlusconi as their leader, not once, but three times? Sublime and maddening, fascinating yet baffling, Italy is a country of seemingly unsolvable riddles. John Hooper's entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the...

A massive survey of science from flint tools to the theory of relativity. It was made as a science counterpart to Sir Kenneth Clark's series Civilisation, with Jacob Bronowski presenting his own view of science and mankind.