Audiobooks Narrated by Colin Fluxman
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LoveReading Top 10
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freckles
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A Slow Fire Burning: The addictive new Sunday Times No.1 bestseller from the author of The Girl on t
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Snow Country: SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
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Piranesi
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168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think
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Impostor: An Alexander Gregory Thriller (The Alexander Gregory Thrillers Book 1): The Alexander Greg
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State of Terror
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The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
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Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
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Bad Boss
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Ancient Jericho: The History and Legacy of One of the World’s Oldest Cities
People associate the story of ancient Jericho with walls, and for those who are Biblically inclined, they think of the walls that God brought tumbling down to the sound of trumpets. For historians who are more archaeologically oriented, it may suggest the prehistoric walls uncovered by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger between 1907 and 1911. To modern societies, walls suggest the division between people and defenses erected out of hatred and mistrust. However, while the story of Jericho does indeed involve walls, they represented something far different than that. More than anything else, ancient Jericho was a point of convergence between cultures, kingdoms, religions, and societies. The reality of that ancient city, possibly the oldest city in human history, was nothing like the story presented in the Bible. Jericho: The History and Legacy of One of the World’s Oldest Cities examines the knowns and unknowns about the ancient city, along with its long history over nearly 12,000 years.
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Homo habilis: The History of the Archaic Hominins and Their Use of Stone Tools
One of the earliest species of the genus Homo to be discovered is Homo habilis, which basically means “handy man.” The name comes from the belief at the time of its discovery that this species was the first to start using stone tools. The first fossils to be uncovered in Olduvai Gorge were from the same stratigraphic layer as simple stone tools. Fossils of the crania and postcranial skeleton for this species have been found in both eastern and southern Africa and date to around 2.5–1.6 million years ago. Given the gradual changes that take place in evolution, Homo habilis shares a number of characteristics that are similar to the genus Australopithecus, such as in the postcranial elements. That said, the size and shape of the Homo habilis skull are markedly different. The size of the brain is much larger relative to the size of the body, being around 680 cc. In order to house a larger brain, the skull features a more vertical frontal bone, creating a more vertical forehead. The brow ridges that sit on the lower portion of the frontal bone are also reduced in size. Other reductions in the face include reduced prognathism and a reduction in the size of the premolars and molars. Postcranial elements display clear signs of bipedalism, such as the large toe being in line with the other toes instead being off to the side as they are in modern apes. Furthermore, the arches of the foot are present, allowing the full weight of the body to be supported and act as a shock absorber when walking. The leg bones are also longer than in Australopithecus, but Homo habilis retained long arms. Other primitive features include hand and finger bones that would have made climbing in the trees easier. The robustness of the finger bones is more comparable to those of modern apes than humans.
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Queen Zenobia of Palmyra: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Levant’s Most Famous Queen
Although the ancient world was for the most part a patriarchal place, more than a few women rose to prominence and were able to exert political power. Hatshepsut (ruled 1479-1458 BCE) was ruler of Egypt’s mighty New Kingdom, and nearly 1,500 years later the more famous Cleopatra VII (reigned 51-30 BCE) was the regent of the Nile Valley. Many other women in Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome played significant roles as regents for their young sons and occasionally as the true power behind the throne. Of these rulers, one of the most significant females in late antiquity was Zenobia, who for just a few short years in the late 3rd century CE ruled the wealthy merchant city of Palmyra. During her time as ruler, Zenobia extended Palmyra’s boundaries from its very circumscribed location in the Syrian desert to that of a full-fledged empire that included most of the Levant, Egypt, and part of Anatolia. Despite living in a man’s world, Zenobia was able to come to power and eventually challenge the Roman Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275) through a combination of intelligence, guile, and some luck. Zenobia’s immediate impact was her direct challenge to the political authorities in both Rome and Persia. Before Zenobia, Palmyra had a fair degree of autonomy, but it was essentially a Roman client state. Palmyra’s stability and wealth were also dependent upon the various dynasties that ruled Persia: the Persians could attack Palmyra from the desert to the east or they could simply stop the trade routes, thereby destroying the city-state’s wealth. Zenobia sought to establish Palmyra as a power in its own right so that it would no longer be a pawn in the constant wars between Rome and Persia. In Zenobia’s eyes, Palmyra was a true equal of the Romans and Persians and should be given an equal place at the geopolitical table when it came to diplomacy and trade.
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Milgram Experiment, The: The History and Legacy of the Controversial Social Psychology Experiment
“Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?' – Stanley Milgram Among psychology experiments, one of the most famous was based on studies into society’s willingness to conform to orders. In the wake of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials, where various Nazis defended their actions by insisting they were simply following orders, various psychologists began to study just how far people were willing to go to listen to authority, even when the authority’s orders were morally dubious. Stanley Milgram oversaw a series of studies in which participants from all kinds of backgrounds were led to believe that they were administering shocks to strangers, and despite the fact that the orders became more severe, the participants continued to administer the shocks, even at levels that could have been deadly. While the study was influenced in part by the Holocaust and people responded to the results with analogies to that genocide, one of the participants himself wrote to Milgram, “While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority.” The Milgram Experiment: The History and Legacy of the Controversial Social Psychology Experiment looks at the origins of the study, how it was conducted, and the effects that the results had on science and psychology.
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Republic of Finland, The: The History of Finland as an Independent Nation
Finland is a Nordic country today bordering Sweden, Norway and Russia. Its population of 5.5 million are mainly concentrated towards the southern end of the country, notably in its capital Helsinki. Yet, Finland’s geography played a major part in its twentieth century history, in particular its territory within the Arctic Circle and waters including the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia. In essence Finland was on the front line of the Second World War and then the Cold War, giving it unique foreign policy considerations. It is a huge country but is relatively sparsely populated and much of its territory is wilderness and extremely inhospitable during the winter months. A peninsula, the Karelian Isthmus, separates the southeast of the country with Russia and is close to St. Petersburg. Indeed, the long border and land bridges with Russia are crucial to understanding Finland’s twentieth century history. In keeping with many other of its neighbours, in the Baltics, northern Europe and in the Nordics, Finland’s path is a combination of its relationship with larger powers and its own agency. As with so many other European countries, much of Finland’s history is characterised by domination from outside powers. Indeed, Finland was ruled by Sweden as part of Stockholm’s empire between 1150 and 1809 and this influence would have implications running into the twentieth century. Swedes made up the majority of the “elite” positions and tension existed between them and Finns. Nineteenth and twentieth century Finnish nationalism would manifest itself in several different forms but would include opposition to Swedes, Russians and other groups. Nevertheless, any tension between Finns and Swedes would ultimately be relatively minor compared to the country’s other battles.
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Battle of Lechfeld, The: The History and Legacy of the Conflicts Between the Germans and Magyars in
Of all the steppe peoples in the medieval period, perhaps none were more important to European history than the Magyars. Like the Huns and Avars before them and the Cumans and Mongols after them, the Magyars burst into Europe as a destructive, unstoppable horde, taking whatever they wanted and leaving a steady stream of misery in their wake. They used many of the same tactics as the other steppe peoples and lived a similar, nomadic lifestyle. The Magyars also had many early cultural affinities with other steppe peoples, following a similar religion and ideas of kingship and nobility, among other things. That said, as similar as the Magyars may have been to other steppe nomads before and after them, they were noticeably different in one way: the Magyars settled down and became a part of Europe and Western Civilization in the Middle Ages. The Magyars exploded onto the European cultural scene in the late 9th century as foreign marauders, but they made alliances with many important kingdoms in less than a century and established their own dynasty in the area, roughly equivalent to the modern nation-state of Hungary. After establishing themselves as a legitimate dynasty among their European peers, the Magyars formed a sort of cultural bridge between the Roman Catholic kingdoms of Western Europe and the Orthodox Christian kingdoms of Eastern Europe. Ultimately, the Magyars chose the Roman Catholic Church, thereby becoming a part of the West and tying their fate to it for the remainder of the Middle Ages. The Battle of Lechfeld: The History and Legacy of the Conflicts Between the Germans and Magyars in Western Europe chronicles the origins of the crucial battles, and how the results affected Europe.
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Hubble Space Telescope, The: The History and Legacy of the World’s Most Famous Telescope
On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program’s 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit. By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world’s most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly $2 billion more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed. When the telescope immediately began transmitting defective images, NASA and the telescope became laughingstocks, literally. In the popular comedy movie Naked Gun 2 1/2, released in 1991, one scene in a café shows a picture of the telescope between pictures of the Titanic and the Hindenburg, implying it was a disaster. It would take three years to launch another space shuttle mission to fix the telescope, and that would be just the first of five servicing missions that have been performed in the 21 years the telescope has been in orbit. However, within about a year of fixing it, the telescope captured images of a major event in the solar system. In July 1994, the telescope provided a firsthand observation of a comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9, breaking apart and slamming into Jupiter. The comet broke into about two dozen pieces, some of them more than a mile wide, and hit the giant planet with the force of millions of atomic bombs. In addition to capturing the streaking comet breaking up and colliding with Jupiter, the telescope captured images of the impact marks that were left on Jupiter’s surface, helping astronomers study Jupiter’s atmosphere and debris left by major impacts.
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Ancient Smyrna: The History and Legacy of the Influential Greek City in Anatolia
Smyrna was one of the various cities that enjoyed brief yet important periods of influence in which they spawned important dynasties, were the scenes of history-changing battles, and were the sites of great advances in philosophy, science, and economics. However, despite the fact it endured in influence for more than 2,000 years, Smyrna never truly gained the reputation of better-known locales in the ancient world. Located on the west coast of what is today the nation-state of Turkey, at its height, Smyrna was a relatively stable and influential Greek city that embraced cultural influences from its Anatolian neighbors. Today, ancient Smyrna is known for being the location of one of the “Seven Churches” of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, and archaeological and textual studies of the city and its surrounding area reveal that its history and influence go back centuries before the apostle Paul walked through its streets and converted the masses to the new religion of Christianity. Long before Smyrna was a part of the Ionian League, and even before it took on a Greek identity and the name “Smyrna,” the area in and around Smyrna was inhabited by people who were part of various Indo-European cultures and pre-Indo-European cultures of Bronze Age Anatolia. The early people of Anatolian Smyrna had contact with the fabled city of Troy and the Hittites of central Anatolia and were probably part of one of two powerful Indo-European kingdoms in the Late Bronze Age. When the Bronze Age collapse took place after 1200 BCE, the region around Smyrna was affected, but the people continued on and formed closer ties with the Greeks on the other side of the Aegean. Thus, Smyrna eventually became an important Greek city, even as it was ruled by the Lydians, Persians, and finally the Romans.
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The Amorites: The History and Legacy of the Nomads Who Conquered Mesopotamia and Established the Bab
The creative impetus of organized society in the Fertile Crescent initially came from southern Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians introduced writing and other hallmarks of civilization to the region just before 3000 BCE, but in less than 1,000 years, things changed dramatically. Mesopotamia experienced the rise and fall of the Sumerian based dynasty in Uruk in the early 3rd millennium BCE, followed by the Akkadian Dynasty in the mid-3rd millennium, and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late 3rd millennium. Each of these dynasties claimed hegemony over large parts of Mesopotamia during the apogees of their power, with the Ur III Dynasty even expanding its influence (but not control) into Syria and Persia. However, when these great regional powers collapsed, it created a vacuum in which new city-states would form, grow, and repeat the process. The city-states that were in the middle of Mesopotamia would either reap the benefits of this process by taking land and cities, or they would experience the pitfalls by being conquered or destroyed, but those on the periphery had a unique perspective and experience. As the Canaanites established themselves in most of the Levant and the Hurrians carved out space for themselves in northwestern Syria, a West Semitic ethnic group known as the Amorites entered Mesopotamia and Syria from the Arabian Desert. The movement of the Amorites and Hurrians coincided with the collapse of the Ur III Dynasty after 2004 BCE (Haywood 2005, 28), although it is not known for sure if the collapse of Ur III led to the movement of peoples, or if the movement at least partially led to the collapse. As the Ur III Dynasty grew weak internally, it could be that the Amorite attacks were a major factor in the destruction of the state. It must be stated, though, that it was the Elamites who ultimately delivered the coup de grace that brought Ur III to its knees. The likely scenario is that the Amorites simply took advantage of the power vacuum.
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Doggerland: The History of the Land that Once Connected Great Britain to Continental Europe
Among the most significant water displacement phenomena in the Western world was Doggerland on the northern European continent. The notable inundation occurred in both a steady and eruptive fashion covering a vast stretch of former tundra, a land bridge between today’s British Isles and the European continent. The event brought about the modern English Channel and an expanded North Sea, and unlike the early supercontinents, the inundation of Doggerland took place after the appearance of people. Incrementally submerged since roughly 18,000 years ago as the climate warmed, the patch of sea between Britain and Europe is the subject of much recent scientific scrutiny. Several fields are participating in the inquiry as to how and why the inundation took place, and the nature of the peoples that settled there. This encompasses earliest man to Neanderthals and on through the Mesolithic prototype of the modern European. The sunken plain that has commonly been dubbed Doggerland is based on its highest point, a now submerged island ridge called Dogger Bank. The name has been associated for several centuries with Dutch fishing vessels called Doggers. These two-masted craft fished the area for cod over hundreds of years. Where the island ridge once sat above the water as the last portion to be submerged, the prominent sand bank is now regarded as both a shipping hazard and treasure trove of potential research. Doggerland: The History of the Land that Once Connected Great Britain to Continental Europe examines what the area was like, the processes that led to it being submerged, and ongoing studies of it.
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Stoicism: The History and Legacy of the Influential Ancient Greek Philosophy
Although the school of philosophy started by Socrates and championed by Plato and Aristotle continues to be the most famous, other schools of thought began to branch, including the Epicureans and Cynics. In the 3rd century B.C., Stoicism arose in response to and under the influence of these older schools, combining many of the best theories from each into a more cohesive whole. With a greater flexibility and more practical application to everyday life, Stoicism quickly became a very popular school of thought, a growth made exponential by its introduction to the Romans. Unlike other philosophies, Stoicism could and did appeal to all classes, and two of its most famous practitioners exemplified this perfectly, one a slave and one an emperor. Due to its widespread appeal and application, as well as its compatibility with basic doctrines, Stoicism was often a natural partner in the rise of Christianity, and thus it remained a popular topic throughout European history and into the present day. Indeed, the true endurance of Stoicism comes from its very real ability to transform lives and allow its practitioners to experience a contentment with their lives that can otherwise be hard to achieve. Stoicism: The History and Legacy of the Influential Ancient Greek Philosophy examines how Stoicism developed, what it teaches, and how it affected people over thousands of years.
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The Burgundians: The History of the Early Kingdoms of Burgundy in the Middle Ages
A history of Burgundy could more accurately be described as the 'history of the Burgundies,' because at different points between 406 and 1795, there were at least 10 distinct entities known as 'Burgundy.' One of the least known of these was the Kingdom of the Burgundians, which lasted from 406-534. This early dominion developed into the Kingdom of Burgundy under the Merovingians and was finally subsumed into the next Kingdom of Burgundy, often known as Cis-Jurane Burgundy, founded in 877. The Burgundians may have originated as far away as Scandinavia, but by the 5th century CE they had settled in the heart of Roman Gaul, or Gallia as the Romans called it. Gaul had once covered a huge area of Western Europe that today comprises northern Italy, France, Belgium, parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and parts of Germany on the west bank of the Rhine. Julius Caesar estimated the population of Gaul in the mid-1st century BCE as approximately 10 million, an enormous number for that time. The Gauls at the time were not a single nation but a loose confederation of tribes sharing a common language, customs and ethnic origin. As such, they were in a constant flux of alliances, double-crossings and wars, both among themselves and with the neighboring Germans of the Rhineland. This only made it easier for the Romans to gradually conquer parts of Gaul, most famously through Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and Gaul became an even more prosperous region. The power vacuum left by Rome’s decline allowed groups like the Burgundians to carve out territories in various parts of the empire, and after the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the next few centuries would see a patchwork of different groups fighting each other across Europe, whether for living space or for imperial purposes. Given their location, the Burgundians would end up playing a crucial role in the establishment of Western Europe as it is known today.
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