Evolution History

Perhaps no country has had such a lasting impact on Western culture as Italy. Whether it’s the frescoes of the Renaissance, the politics of ancient Rome, or the formation of the Catholic Church, Italy holds a central place on the world’s stage. This audiobook gives a quick but detailed overview of Italy’s grand, sweeping history, from ancient city-state to modern cultural mecca. Whether you’re a student of Italian history looking for a refresher or a brand-new learner looking for an introduction, this audiobook is a concise, easy-to-follow overview.

“Can I save my daughter . . . and them?” Time traveler Tom Cook has settled into his prehistoric life among the Neanderthals, but it’s not without its challenges that include a burning desire to see his future-dwelling daughter, Pook, again. When a growing threat from hostile neighbors turns into an attack, an old contact from another world comes to the rescue and leads both Tom and his Neanderthal wife, Brassy, back to that future through an increasingly unstable time portal. Now, after traveling to and from two different worlds, Tom must find a way to defeat his enemies in both, ...

The time has come for you to embrace the power of remembrance and express your full potential, and The Divine Design is your faithful companion on this lifelong journey. Whether you’re looking for daily guidance or long-term clarity, each passage will reveal something different every time you listen to it that serves you exactly where you are in your human evolution.

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.

The characters in Tasting the Past include a young Swiss scientist who set out to decode the DNA of every single wine grape in the world; Middle Eastern researchers who seek to discover the wines that King David drank; and a University of Pennsylvania academic who has spent decades analyzing wine remains. The science illuminates wine in ways no critic can, and demolishes some of the most sacred dogmas of the industry: well-known French grapes aren't especially noble.

In the treacherous waters of the Taiwan Strait, the fate of freedom and trade hangs in the balance. As the world watches with bated breath, one question looms large: can China successfully invade Taiwan? The answer lies in the uncharted waters of military history, where the tides of war have shaped the destiny of nations. From D-Day to today's digital deterrence, amphibious assault is usually bloody. Why China CANNOT Invade Taiwan. examines this vital military tactic through history, exploring its evolution alongside the unique challenges posed by Taiwan's strategic location in the Pacific ...

Historians and economists commonly cite natural disasters and foreign invasions to explain cultural collapses. The problem is, human families have been suffering and overcoming disasters for thousands of years. Humans cover most of the earth; they have learned to live on polar ice and in arid deserts. They have adapted to tropical islands and rain forests. Humans live literally everywhere. And wherever humans wander, they create cultures and civilizations. Civilizations fall apart when human economies and cultures collapse. The question is--what forces, over long, long time periods, divide ...

The second book by former Navy SEAL Mark Owen, following his multimillion-copy classic about the bin Laden mission No Easy Day, in which he tells the stories from his career that were most personal to him and that made him the operator and the person he is today.

In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet", focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.

When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the southeast United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea.

How does the water of the brain yield the wine of conscious experience? What is the link between bodily activity and our inner feeling of what it’s like to be our selves? The problem of qualia — the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness — has intrigued philosophers for generations and remains the greatest challenge to contemporary science. In this path-breaking book, Nicholas Humphrey examines the issues in the light of evolutionary history and proposes a solution very different from any previously offered. He suggests that instead of focusing on second-order mental faculties, or ...

Edward J. Larson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and eminent science historian. This marvelously readable, yet sumptuously erudite work traces the development of the scientific theory of evolution. From Darwin's essential trip to the Galápagos, to the most contemporary studies in sociobiology, this work takes listeners both into the field and laboratories of the world's greatest evolutionary scientists, and shows how the theory of evolution has itself evolved.

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

This book explores how Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution were a product of the nineteenth-century reductive mindset.

In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthals has been transformed, thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals' behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and communicated with spoken language. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies are compelling us to reassess the Neanderthals' place in our own past.

Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species.

A History of the Football is the first book to examine the history of the gridiron football; the evolutionary path it took from its rugby ball origins to today’s distinctive prolate spheroid. Richly illustrated with period images, the book examines how and why the football changed in shape, size, colors, added stripes, and gained inflation standards, all while describing these changes in the context of the game’s evolution.

Whether driven by mass psychology, fear, or greed of investors, the forces of supply and demand, or a combination, technical analysis has flourished for thousands of years on the outskirts of the financial establishment. In The Evolution of Technical Analysis: Financial Prediction from Babylonian Tablets to Bloomberg Terminals, MIT's Andrew W. Lo details how the charting of past stock prices for the purpose of identifying trends, patterns, strength, and cycles within market data has allowed traders to make informed investment decisions based in logic, rather than on luck.

Beginning with their introduction in the 11th century, and ending with their widespread abandonment in the 17th, Marc Morris explores many of the country's most famous castles, as well as some spectacular lesser-known examples. At times this is an epic tale, driven by characters like William the Conqueror, King John, and Edward I, full of sieges and conquest on an awesome scale.

Ever since the human mind developed the capacity for thought, people have pondered not just the meaning of life, but the genesis of the world, the universe, and all the natural marvels and precious forms of life within it. To this day, all of these intricate subjects continue to be matters of great contention, and they are often best encapsulated in the debate between creationism and evolution. On the one hand are those who are adamant that it was God, or some other supreme being, that designed and crafted every detail of the universe.