false 1374660 1 0 16863 0743227409 9780743227407 8 <![CDATA[Near a Thousand Tables : A History of Food]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166761332m/16863.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166761332s/16863.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16863.Near_a_Thousand_Tables_A_History_of_Food 3.43 68 Near a Thousand Tables places its beginnings in cooking, a social act that forges culture (and is perhaps responsible for it), then pursues it as a series of "revolutions"--from the inception of cooking, herding, and agriculture to food industrialization and, finally, modern globalization. Informatively dense yet spry and aphoristic, the book explores food as rite and magic (it "binds those who believe, brands those who don't"); the domestication of animals (snails are the world's oldest "cattle"); farming and food's use as an index of rank ("greatness goes with greatness of girth"--or at least it did); food's role in trade and cultural exchange (Tex-Mex cooking as a form of colonial miscegenation); and as a force in and for industrialization (canning as the cooking of the Industrial Revolution). In the end, we are brought to "the loneliness of the fast food eater" and the "desocializing" effect of microwave cooking and other forms of modern food manipulation that alienate us from the communal act that "made" culture. "Food gives pleasure," Fernández-Armesto writes, and "can change the eater for better or worse." He concludes, "the role of the next revolution will be to subvert the last."

This is a fascinating book that shows us ourselves: like the cannibal, who eats his enemy to appropriate his power, we believe in food's transformative effect, which through devotion to vegetarianism and other special diets will make us "better." It paints a picture both sweeping and precise. --Arthur Boehm

]]> 1374660 3.65 268 51 2002 563127 074320249X 9780743202497 4 <![CDATA[Civilizations : Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175817536m/563127.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175817536s/563127.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/563127.Civilizations_Culture_Ambition_and_the_Transformation_of_Nature 3.88 26 All such distinctions, writes Oxford University historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, are arbitrary and laden with subjective value; they speak to unscientific notions of progress, to hidden agendas. What matters, he continues, is the extent to which a culture has developed means to separate itself from nature: "Civilization makes its own habitat. It is civilized in direct proportion to its distance, its difference from the unmodified natural environment." A culture such as the ancient Han Chinese, the medieval highland Maya, or the Renaissance Venetian, then, is highly civilized inasmuch as its members dammed and diverted rivers, drained lakes, stripped forests, and built monumental structures to celebrate their achievements; people content or resigned to "live off the product and inhabit the spaces nature gives them" are markedly less so by virtue of that accommodation.

No culture, Fernández-Armesto writes, is inherently exempt from becoming civilized; nor, he adds, does "civilized" equate to "good." In exploring history as a branch of historical ecology, he sometimes abandons his thesis, intriguing and provocative as it is, to engage in a wide-ranging survey of the world past reminiscent of (but much better-written than) Toynbee and Durant, touching on the ancient Greeks here, the herding peoples of the African savanna and Central Asia there, the Moundbuilders of prehistoric North America and the hunting peoples of the Arctic there. Unlike many standard textbooks, his narrative manages to offer something new wherever he turns. Allusive and learned, his book repays close reading--and should inspire plenty of argument along the way. -- Gregory McNamee

]]> 1374660 3.65 268 51 2000 570153 0789496097 9780789496096 5 <![CDATA[Ideas That Changed the World]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175884736m/570153.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175884736s/570153.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/570153.Ideas_That_Changed_the_World 4.09 22 1374660 3.65 268 51 2003 674128 1400062810 9781400062812 6 <![CDATA[Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177013070m/674128.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177013070s/674128.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/674128.Amerigo_The_Man_Who_Gave_His_Name_to_America 3.36 22
In Amerigo, the award-winning scholar Felipe Fernández-Armesto answers the question “What’s in a name?” by delivering a rousing flesh-and-blood narrative of the life and times of Amerigo Vespucci. Here we meet Amerigo as he really was: a sometime slaver and small-time jewel trader; a contemporary, confidant, and rival of Columbus; an amateur sorcerer who attained fame and honor by dint of a series of disastrous failures and equally grand self-reinventions. Filled with well-informed insights and amazing anecdotes, this magisterial and compulsively readable account sweeps readers from Medicean Florence to the Sevillian court of Ferdinand and Isabella, then across the Atlantic of Columbus to the brave New World where fortune favored the bold.

Amerigo Vespucci emerges from these pages as an irresistible avatar for the age of exploration–and as a man of genuine achievement as a voyager and chronicler of discovery. A product of the Florentine Renaissance, Amerigo in many ways was like his native Florence at the turn of the sixteenth century: fast-paced, flashy, competitive, acquisitive, and violent. His ability to sell himself–evident now, 500 years later, as an entire hemisphere that he did not “discover” bears his name–was legendary. But as Fernández-Armesto ably demonstrates, there was indeed some fire to go with all the smoke: In addition to being a relentless salesman and possibly a ruthless appropriator of other people’s efforts, Amerigo was foremost a person of unique abilities, courage, and cunning. And now, in Amerigo, this mercurial and elusive figure finally has a biography to do full justice to both the man and his remarkable era.

“A dazzling new biography . . . an elegant tale.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An outstanding historian of Atlantic exploration, Fernández-Armesto delves into the oddities of cultural transmission that attached the name America to the continents discovered in the 1490s. Most know that it honors Amerigo Vespucci, whom the author introduces as an amazing Renaissance character independent of his name’s fame–and does Fernández-Armesto ever deliver.”
–Booklist (starred review)]]> 1374660 3.65 268 51 2007 16862 0393062597 9780393062595 6 <![CDATA[Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166761331m/16862.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166761331s/16862.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16862.Pathfinders_A_Global_History_of_Exploration 4.06 17 High adventure and grand history from a master of the craft in a beautifully illustrated volume.

With characteristic flair, Felipe Fernández-Armesto gives us an entertaining and insightful history of world exploration. Presenting the subject for the first time on a truly global scale, Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, lay down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a grand narrative full of character and story. Deftly embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with unusual depth and breadth. Here is an intellectual adventure as rewarding as it is thrilling. 16 pages of color; 48 maps; 44 illustrations.]]> 1374660 3.65 268 51 2006 504899 0812975545 9780812975543 6 <![CDATA[The Americas: A Hemispheric History]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175312971m/504899.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175312971s/504899.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/504899.The_Americas_A_Hemispheric_History 3.30 20 1374660 3.65 268 51 2003 507977 0684825368 9780684825366 2 <![CDATA[Millennium]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175359478m/507977.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175359478s/507977.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/507977.Millennium 3.76 17 Millennium sweeps the past and scans the prospects to present an unprecedented vision of genuinely global history.

Millennium is a new initiative in narrative history, viewing the current millennium as it draws to a close as from the future.  The evidence of what this thousand years represents is explored with more intricacy and intimacy than has ever been attempted in a work of this size.  With the help of perfectly chosen details, our past history is illuminated over the course of a millennium on the scale of entire civilisations and cultures, revealing the historical initiative as it shifts from one part of the world to another and back again.

With its vivid writing and hundreds of illustrations, Millennium is a classic of popular history: one of the few books which has relevance for the present as well and enduring interest for the future.  Critically acclaimed on first publication, it was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.]]> 1374660 3.65 268 51 1995 2646860 1402582064 2 <![CDATA[Ideas That Shaped Mankind: A Concise History of Human Thought]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2646860.Ideas_That_Shaped_Mankind_A_Concise_History_of_Human_Thought 3.14 7 1374660 3.65 268 51 2004 488472 0312274947 9780312274948 1 <![CDATA[Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175183064m/488472.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175183064s/488472.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/488472.Truth_A_History_and_a_Guide_for_the_Perplexed 3.80 5 1374660 3.65 268 51 1997 563129 0812214129 9780812214123 0 <![CDATA[Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175817537m/563129.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175817537s/563129.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/563129.Before_Columbus_Exploration_and_Colonisation_from_the_Mediterranean_to_the_Atlantic_1229_1492 3.75 4 1374660 3.65 268 51 1987