The Map of Knowledge
A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
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Narrated by:
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Susan Duerden
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By:
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Violet Moller
About this listen
“The Map of Knowledge is an endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.” (Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
After the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were lost to the ravages of the Dark Ages, three crucial manuscripts passed hand to hand through seven Mediterranean cities and survived to fuel the revival of the Renaissance - an exciting debut history.
The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed.
Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean - rare centers of knowledge in a dark world, where scholars supported by enlightened heads of state collected, translated, and shared manuscripts. In 8th century Baghdad, Arab discoveries augmented Greek learning. Exchange within the thriving Muslim world brought that knowledge to Cordoba, Spain. Toledo became a famous center of translation from Arabic into Latin, a portal through which Greek and Arab ideas reached Western Europe. Salerno, on the Italian coast, was the great center of medical studies, and Sicily, ancient colony of the Greeks, was one of the few places in the West to retain contact with Greek culture and language. Scholars in these cities helped classical ideas make their way to Venice in the 15th century, where printers thrived and the Renaissance took root.
The Map of Knowledge follows three key texts - Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's The Almagest, and Galen's writings on medicine - on a perilous journey driven by insatiable curiosity about the world.
“A lovely debut from a gifted young author. Violet Moller brings to life the ways in which knowledge reached us from antiquity to the present day in a book that is as delightful as it is readable.” (Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads)
“A sumptuous, glittering, endlessly fascinating book, written with passion, verve, and humor.” (Catherine Nixey, author of The Darkening Age)
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Critic reviews
“Euclid’s Elements is the seed from which my subject of mathematics grew. Thanks to this fascinating and meticulous account, I’ve had a glimpse of just how Euclid’s text, together with works by Ptolemy and Galen, blossomed as they wound their way through the centuries and the seven cities at the heart of Violet Moller’s book. What an adventure.” (Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and author of The Music of the Primes)
"Through Moller’s imagination, the reader is invited to marvel at how multicultural the ancient world was, and to consider how the foundational knowledge of the Western world did not simply leap from the ancient Greeks to modern times but was painstakingly preserved, analyzed and innovated upon for almost 1,000 years.” (Rachel Newcomb, Washington Post)
“The author meticulously and enthusiastically unwinds the ‘dense, tangled undergrowth of manuscript history’ in seven cities.... Moller enlivens her history with stories about young scholars who dedicated their lives to preserving these valuable texts.... A dramatic story of how civilization was passed on and preserved.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.
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Excellent Book
- By Zahid Ahmad on 08-14-18
By: Maria Rosa Menocal, and others
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
- Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
- By: Edward Wilson-Lee
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
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Story
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.
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Erudite. Stimulating. Rewarding.
- By R. P. RIBEYRE on 10-26-20
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Sumerians: A History from Beginning to End
- By: Henry Freeman
- Narrated by: Christopher Boozell
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A legendary civilization vanished under the Fertile Crescent and escaped a fate worse than death until Sumerologists questioned widely accepted truths. The Sumerians reemerged onto the extraordinary timeline of human history. Their tales of kings and gods, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, and their fearless trade in distant lands, during the remarkable Bronze Age, centered in the world’s first city-states that chronicled ancient rivalries and their enduring impact.
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The writing is so poor I could not listen.
- By Erin on 12-04-21
By: Henry Freeman
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Ibn Khaldun
- An Intellectual Biography
- By: Robert Irwin
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
- By Moh 3aly on 01-02-19
By: Robert Irwin
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The Bookseller of Florence
- The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
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Great book, Horrible narrator
- By Sergio Remon on 07-01-21
By: Ross King
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The Discoverers
- A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin
- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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Story
Why didn't the Chinese discover America? Why were people so slow to learn the earth goes around the sun? How and why did we begin to think of "species" of plants and animals? How, when, and why did people begin digging in the earth to learn about the past? How did the study of economics begin? These are but a few of the fascinating questions answered by Dr. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress Emeritus.
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One of my Top 10 Fav. Books!
- By shannonnn on 05-09-05
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The Rise and Fall of Alexandria
- Birthplace of the Modern Mind
- By: Justin Pollard, Howard Reid
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome. It was the marvel of its age, legendary for its vast palaces, safe harbors, and magnificent lighthouse. But it was most famous for the astonishing intellectual efflorescence it fostered and the library it produced. If the European Renaissance was the "rebirth" of Western culture, then Alexandria, Egypt, was its birthplace.
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A good listen
- By Jeffrey on 10-02-08
By: Justin Pollard, and others
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Arabs
- A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires
- By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
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Good book bad narration
- By Anonymous User on 09-18-19
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The Florentines
- From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of Western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born - or emerge in an entirely new guise.
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Narrator ruins the narrative
- By amavita on 03-24-22
By: Paul Strathern
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Sailing from Byzantium
- How a Lost Empire Shaped the World
- By: Colin Wells
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
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Performance
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Story
A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege.
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The Missing Years
- By Nikoli Gogol on 12-29-07
By: Colin Wells
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Babylon
- Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
- By: Paul Kriwaczek
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
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Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period.
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Solid overview 3000 years of history
- By Alsor2000 on 07-19-20
By: Paul Kriwaczek
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Palestine
- A Four Thousand Year History
- By: Nur Masalha
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
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Story
This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.
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More political manifesto than history book
- By Peter Deane on 12-06-22
By: Nur Masalha
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For 2,500 years, the Celts have continued to fascinate those who have come into contact with them, yet their origins have remained a mystery and even today are the subject of heated debate among historians and archaeologists. Barry Cunliffe's classic study of the ancient Celtic world was first published in 1997. Since then, huge advances have taken place in our knowledge: new finds, new ways of using DNA records to understand Celtic origins, new ideas about the proto-urban nature of early chieftains' strongholds. All these developments are part of this fully updated edition.
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What listeners say about The Map of Knowledge
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ALWALEED
- 03-20-21
Amazing book
Opened the horizon in my mind behind knowledge and explained how important is to cooperate together no matter what is the religion or skin color is. It is all for the human and also nobody owns the knowledge.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-30-20
Great literature and the arts of writing history.
It was very interesting to learn about the art in writing books. from different parts of the world. The struggle to keep history alive made me want to listen . Great book!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Benjamin Sedrish
- 08-27-23
Ruined by performance
Why does every sentence sound like a newscaster signing off? Truly ruined what seems like a good book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- amcan
- 10-08-20
Fascinating Historical Review
Brilliantly written, providing captivating and unique insights into the little known historical figures who kept our civilizations invaluable legacy of ancient knowledge alive and more or less intact. Excellent performance as well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- G. Raney
- 10-14-24
Great Historical Summary
Great summary of how knowledge (through the building of libraries) move from one empire and culture to another through history. The challenges and impact on knowledge brought on by how culture and religion interacted was also very insightful.
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- Todd
- 08-05-19
Why is the Voice of "Civilization" Always British?
Great Book. Bad Production Choices.
The producers choose to go with the cliched British narrator - the media's constant and invariable "voice of civilization" straight out of central casting.
Never mind the book is explicitly ABOUT how the West has deliberately ignored or derogated the contributions of non-western intellectual traditions to world knowledge.
It's not even stupid. It's perverse.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-18-19
Fascinating!!
A very interesting listen of the history of travel of knowledge, through cities and cultures!
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- nathan535
- 11-05-19
Terrible narration.
Unbearable. Each sentence is narrated in the same repetitive tone. Every sentence sounds the same. Voice inflection steady, up and down. Over and over and over. Drove me mad.
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- Tony
- 02-17-23
Interesting
Interesting book on centers of learning and knowledge centers throughout history. Narrator is fine once you become accustomed.
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- Steve
- 08-05-19
One note narrator and fire-hose names and data
While the depth of research and information in this read is excellent, the way in which it's brought to light is less than palatable. There are ways to write history (Montefiore's "Jerusalem" for instance) and then there are reads like this. A different narrator might make all the difference (as it certainly does with Jerusalem)- every single sentence in this one ends with the same down-turn in pitch; probably excellent as a soporific.
It might even be better in print - thrown at you scatter-gun style are many, many names of middle eastern decent, including multiple (correctly) tacked on patronymics stretching back generations - these are difficult (at least for my ear) to come to terms with and make connections. Seeing them written might alleviate some of the bewilderment. There is also the usual burden of historians - the lack of creativity in European names of old: too many actors with identical names. This of course is not the fault of the author but I have seen this handled better elsewhere.
To its credit, the book tries to "storyfy" the history, following some key players who dragged books about and created translations to disseminate the knowledge to the west, but it suffers from the author having to cram so many centuries into a readable tome and creates name/date whiplash in a non-scholar reader.
One topic worth the read is the sheer volume of more correct knowledge held in the books of the middle east that took centuries to arrive in Europe, predating, for instance, a Copernican heliocentric solar system by many hundreds of years. How much farther ahead would we be as a species if that information had been propagated sooner. A weather bell for current nationalistic thinking.
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