Cranston Public Library

The author dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors he feels are responsible for history's broadest patterns.

Diane Ackerman confronts the unprecedented reality that one prodigiously intelligent and meddlesome creature, Homo sapiens, is shaping the future of planet Earth. Humans have "subdued 75 percent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness." We tinker with nature at every opportunity; we garden the planet with our preferred species of plants and animals, many of them invasive; and...

"What good are the arts? Why should we care about the past? For millennia, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the "know-how" of life, but the "know-why"--the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, architecture, religion, and philosophy. This crucial passing down of knowledge has required the radical integration of insights from the past and from other cultures. In Culture, acclaimed author,...

"David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed,...

"An eminent historian demonstrates how claims about the origins of humanity have been used to justify many of the worst events of the last three hundred years"--

"The remarkable story of how nomads have fostered and refreshed civilization throughout our history. Moving across millennia, Nomads explores the transformative and often bloody relationship between settled and mobile societies. Often overlooked in history, the story of the umbilical connections between these two very different ways of living presents a radical new view of human civilization. From the Neolithic revolution to the twenty-first century...

In this course, Oxford University professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto, shares his views on the notion that man's capacity to produce ideas in itself brings about sweeping changes in the world. This ability, seen most profoundly in individual, startling moments of genius--or equally startling moments of chance--is what separates humans from the animals and allows humans to re-imagine the world in ever more complex designs.

In this course, Kenyon College professor Dr. Timothy B. Shutt addresses three wars fought in antiquity, each of which had--even two thousand years and more later--a decisive effect in shaping our communal sense of who we are, wherever Western values hold.