Big Questions in History

Big Questions in History
Author: Harriet Swain
Publisher: Arrow
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN:
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A distinguished group of historians answers key questions about the past and about the present and future. What wins wars? Why do empires rise and fall? What makes a great leader? What causes nationalism? How do spiritual movements spread? These are the questions in the forefront of our minds today but they meant just as much to people in the past. How did earlier generations tackle them, and how far can historians use the lessons of the past to help find some answers? Drawing on examples from ancient Greece to Tony Blair s Britain, leading historical thinkers address twenty of the really big questions that have been asked over the centuries: What is history? How does personality affect politics? What is the impact of technology on social change? How do intellectual movements start? How do our physical bodies and our private lives impact history? Each essay is accompanied by commentary by a journalist, discussing the views of other leading thinkers, today and in the past. The result is a stimulating ride over continents and across centuries in search of answers that are sometimes surprising, often controversial, and all of great relevance to how we live today. "From the Hardcover edition.""

The History Manifesto

The History Manifesto
Author: Jo Guldi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014-10-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316165256
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How should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.

The Age of Questions

The Age of Questions
Author: Holly Case
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691210373
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A groundbreaking history of the Big Questions that dominated the nineteenth century In the early nineteenth century, a new age began: the age of questions. In the Eastern and Belgian questions, as much as in the slavery, worker, social, woman, and Jewish questions, contemporaries saw not interrogatives to be answered but problems to be solved. Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Adolf Hitler were among the many who put their pens to the task. The Age of Questions asks how the question form arose, what trajectory it followed, and why it provoked such feverish excitement for over a century. Was there a family resemblance between questions? Have they disappeared, or are they on the rise again in our time? In this pioneering book, Holly Case undertakes a stunningly original analysis, presenting, chapter by chapter, seven distinct arguments and frameworks for understanding the age. She considers whether it was marked by a progressive quest for emancipation (of women, slaves, Jews, laborers, and others); a steady, inexorable march toward genocide and the "Final Solution"; or a movement toward federation and the dissolution of boundaries. Or was it simply a farce, a false frenzy dreamed up by publicists eager to sell subscriptions? As the arguments clash, patterns emerge and sharpen until the age reveals its full and peculiar nature. Turning convention on its head with meticulous and astonishingly broad scholarship, The Age of Questions illuminates how patterns of thinking move history.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Brief Answers to the Big Questions
Author: Stephen Hawking
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1473696003
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THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A beautiful little book by a brilliant mind' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Effortlessly instructive, absorbing, up to the minute and - where it matters - witty' GUARDIAN The world-famous cosmologist and #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe's biggest questions in this brilliant posthumous work. Is there a God? How did it all begin? Can we predict the future? What is inside a black hole? Is there other intelligent life in the universe? Will artificial intelligence outsmart us? How do we shape the future? Will we survive on Earth? Should we colonise space? Is time travel possible? Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded our understanding of the universe and unravelled some of its greatest mysteries. But even as his theoretical work on black holes, imaginary time and multiple histories took his mind to the furthest reaches of space, Hawking always believed that science could also be used to fix the problems on our planet. And now, as we face potentially catastrophic changes here on Earth - from climate change to dwindling natural resources to the threat of artificial super-intelligence - Stephen Hawking turns his attention to the most urgent issues for humankind. Wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating, passionately argued, and infused with his characteristic humour, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, the final book from one of the greatest minds in history, is a personal view on the challenges we face as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next. A percentage of all royalties will go to charity.

The Big Questions in Science

The Big Questions in Science
Author: Hayley Birch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2016-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780233004891
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What are the great scientific questions of our modern age and why don't we know the answers? This volume takes on the most fascinating and pressing mysteries we have yet to crack and explains how tantalisingly close science is to solving them (or how frustratingly out of reach they remain).

3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager

3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager
Author: Kara Powell
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493430319
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Today's teenagers are the most anxious, creative, and diverse generation in history--which can make it hard for us to relate. And while every teenager is a walking bundle of questions, three rise above the rest: - Who am I? - Where do I fit? - What difference can I make? Young people struggle to find satisfying and life-giving answers to these questions on their own. They need caring adults willing to lean in with empathy, practice listening, and gently point them in the direction of better answers: they are enough because of Jesus, they belong with God's people, and they are invited into God's greater story. In this book, which is based on new landmark research from the Fuller Youth Institute and combines in-depth interviews with data from 1,200 diverse teenagers, Kara Powell and Brad M. Griffin offer pastors, youth leaders, mentors, and parents practical and proven conversations and connections that help teenagers answer their three biggest questions and reach their full potential.

Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh
Author:
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 0684818450
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One of the most extraordinary works of the human imagination and the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life was first made accessible to the public 10 years ago. This new edition retains the quality of the original translation, has been enriched, and includes 20 new illustrations, maps, drawings, and photos.

Thinking About History

Thinking About History
Author: Sarah Maza
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2017-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 022610947X
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What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza’s Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking About History is organized around big questions: Whose history do we write, and how does that affect what stories get told and how they are told? How did we come to view the nation as the inevitable context for history, and what happens when we move outside those boundaries? What is the relation among popular, academic, and public history, and how should we evaluate sources? What is the difference between description and interpretation, and how do we balance them? Maza provides choice examples in place of definitive answers, and the result is a book that will spark classroom discussion and offer students a view of history as a vibrant, ever-changing field of inquiry that is thoroughly relevant to our daily lives.

What Do We Really Know?

What Do We Really Know?
Author: Simon Blackburn
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-07-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781780875873
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In What Do We Really Know? Simon Blackburn addresses the twenty most-asked philosophical questions, including 'Can machines think?', 'What is the meaning of life?', 'Is death to be feared?', 'Why be good?', 'What am I?' and 'What do we really know?' Each 3000-word essay examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, and provides answers from history's great thinkers.

Can a Bee Sting a Bee?

Can a Bee Sting a Bee?
Author:
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0062223240
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In the spirit of Schott’s Miscellany, The Magic of Reality, and The Dangerous Book for Boys comes Can a Bee Sting a Bee?—a smart, illuminating, essential, and utterly delightful handbook for perplexed parents and their curious children. Author Gemma Elwin Harris has lovingly compiled weighty questions from precocious grade school children—queries that have long dumbfounded even intelligent adults—and she’s gathered together a notable crew of scientists, specialists, philosophers, and writers to answer them. Authors Mary Roach and Phillip Pullman, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, chef Gordon Ramsay, adventurist Bear Gryllis, and linguist Noam Chomsky are among the top experts responding to the Big Questions from Little People, (“Do animals have feelings?”, “Why can’t I tickle myself?”, “Who is God?”) with well-known comedians, columnists, and raconteurs offering hilarious alternative answers. Miles above your average general knowledge and trivia collections, this charming compendium is a book fans of the E.H. Gombrich classic, A Little History of the World, will adore.