Bøger af Ian Morris

Why does the West rule? This title answers this provocative question, drawing on 15,000 years of history and archaeology, and the methods of social science.

This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece will be required reading for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period. This book differs from many topical studies of state formation in that unique and particular developments are given as much weight as those factors which are common to all early states. The ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons are extensively drawn on in an attempt to explain the transition to the city-state, a development which was to have decisive effects for the subsequent development of European society.

In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the ten-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world.When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny-yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means.Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules-for Now, describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and-increasingly-Chinese actors. In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it's what to do about Beijing.

Simple Machines is a novel of passage - of myth and unexpected consequence - set in Wisconsin during one year in the life of Tomas Zimmermann.Tomas lives in an apartment above the bike shop owned by his father, Ernst Zimmermann, a war refugee from Germany and a former professional bike racer who is escaping a life of bitter disappointment.Through high school graduation and over a last summer at home on an island in Lake Superior, Tomas keeps company with Grey and Callie, his best friends since childhood, as they contemplate what will happen next.In the fall, Tomas leaves the island of Saint Raphael, where he has lived since age of six, and heads south by bike toward an uncertain future.At school Tom is befriended by a charismatic history professor and through him meets the members of an eccentric guerilla theater group, who are in the midst of a bold theatrical production. As Simple Machines approaches a climax, Grey and Callie reappear with trouble of their own, and Tom is forced to choose between loyalty to his friends and father at home and the college world in which he feels a new sense of belonging.

Tells the true story of the Worcestershire brothers, Mac and Barry Goodwin, whose mastery of the air as teenagers and then as RAF pilots in 605 (The County of Warwick) Squadron and 609 (West Riding) Squadron in WW2 flying Hurricanes and Spitfires is set against a privileged family background.

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West's rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules-for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines-from ancient history to neuroscience-not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

The best-selling author of Why the West Rules-for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, biology, and history, Ian Morris explains why. Fundamental long-term changes in values, Morris argues, are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. Humans have found three main ways to get the energy they need-from foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. Each energy source sets strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed, and each kind of society rewards specific values. But if our fossil-fuel world favors democratic, open societies, the ongoing revolution in energy capture means that our most cherished values are very likely to turn out not to be useful any more. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels offers a compelling new argument about the evolution of human values, one that has far-reaching implications for how we understand the past-and for what might happen next. Originating as the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, the book includes challenging responses by classicist Richard Seaford, historian of China Jonathan Spence, philosopher Christine Korsgaard, and novelist Margaret Atwood.

A bold and controversial rethinking of the role of war in human history and how it will shape our future, sure to provoke debate, from the bestselling author of Why the West Rules - For Now.

Set in Chicago, this title features Nix, a college instructor whose novel has flopped. Although he and his pregnant wife are struggling financially, their fortunes change when Nix is asked to ghostwrite the memoirs of publishing magnate Zira Fontaine.

In the last thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century. Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits--energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity--and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years--from about 550 to 1750 CE--when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.

For courses in Greek History or Greek Civilization. Organized chronologically, this text presents a complete picture of Greek civilization as a history. It features sections on the art, architecture, literature, and thought of each period. This text presents students with the history of Greece from the prehistoric through the Mycenaean Period, the Dark Ages, the Classical Period, the Hellenistic, and the absorption of Greek culture by Rome.

This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece draws upon the ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons to explain the transition to the city-state. It will be an invaluable resource for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period.