The Invention of Yesterday

The Invention of Yesterday PDF Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

The Invention of Yesterday

The Invention of Yesterday PDF Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

Games without Rules

Games without Rules PDF Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610393198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
By the author of Destiny Disrupted: an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation

The World Until Yesterday

The World Until Yesterday PDF Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101606002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 727

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Book Description
The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? “As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing new book." Bookpage Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day PDF Author: Mir Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403488930
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Introduces Veterans Day, explaining the historical events behind it, how it became a holiday, and how it is observed.

West of Kabul, East of New York

West of Kabul, East of New York PDF Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429935960
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Tamim Ansary's passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict, West of Kabul, East of New York. Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn back to the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism. Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.

Columbus Day

Columbus Day PDF Author: Mir Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403488831
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
It is the second Monday in October and school is closed. But do you know why? It's Columbus Day of course! Turn the pages of this book to find out: how Columbus got lost but still became a hero, why native Americans are sometimes called Indians, how other countries celebrate Columbus Day. Each book in the Holiday Histories series describes one of America's holidays or special days. Explore the history of each day and learn the real reason why it is important. Discover what special meaning each day might have for you.

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's PDF Author: Frederick Lewis Allen
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen is a history textbook about the lively gloriousness of Roaring 20s America. Contents: "II. BACK TO NORMALCY III. THE BIG RED SCARE IV. AMERICA CONVALESCENT V. THE REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS VI. HARDING AND THE SCANDALS VII. COOLIDGE PROSPERITY VIII. THE BALLYHOO YEARS IX. THE REVOLT OF THE HIGHBROWS X. ALCOHOL AND AL CAPONE XI. HOME, SWEET FLORIDA."

The Story of Innovation

The Story of Innovation PDF Author: James Trefil
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426217056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
"Documenting the interconnectedness among the crucial milestones of our time, and illustrated with full-color photography, a comprehensive tour of modern science and technology explores the most important innovations and inventions in engineering, physics, medicine, chemistry, biology and more."--Publisher's description.

Great Inventors and Their Inventions

Great Inventors and Their Inventions PDF Author: Frank Puterbaugh Bachman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inventions
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Nine remarkable men produced inventions that changed the world. The printing press, the telephone, powered flight, recording and others have made the modern world what it is. But who were the men who had these ideas and made reality of them? As David Angus shows, they were very different quiet, boisterous, confident, withdrawn but all had a moment of vision allied to single-minded determination to battle through numerous prototypes and produced something that really worked. It is a fascinating account for younger listeners.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret PDF Author: Brian Selznick
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 1407166573
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
An orphan and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy train station. He desperately believes a broken automaton will make his dreams come true. But when his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo's undercover life are put in jeopardy. Turn the pages, follow the illustrations and enter an unforgettable new world!