The ultimate gift for cat lovers everywhere—100 illustrated and unbelievably true tales of the remarkable felines who made their mark on science, history, art, government, and religion.
 
If you don’t believe that one cat has the power to alter civilization, then you’ve obviously never heard of Tibbles, the cat who single-handedly wiped out an entire species. Or Ahmedabad, a Siamese kitten who sparked riots throughout...

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved....

A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time-listed in accessible and succinct form-by one of the world's greatest scholars. From the "Hundred Best Books" to the "Ten Greatest Thinkers" to the "Ten Greatest Poets," here is a concise collection of the world's most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon-and wrote about-the most significant eras, individuals,...

Merging space travel with a road trip, a father drives all over the solar system at 37 mph in order to allow his children to view the conflicts of Earth's history in the rearview mirror. Whether it's only been the 78 years it takes to drive to Venus or the 8,000 it takes to get to Neptune, humans have been fighting each other for small pieces of space on our planet.

From the producers of America: The Story of Us comes the epic tale of the rise of civilization. Mankind: The Story of All of Us, a 12-hour series, spans the first flourishing of life in Mesopotamia through the discovery of America, capturing the danger, action, struggle, heroism, and adrenaline using groundbreaking techniques.

In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, a master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, shows how a religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate day laborers in a remote part of the empire became the official religion of Rome, converting some thirty million people in just four centuries. The Triumph of Christianity combines deep knowledge and meticulous research in an eye-opening, immensely readable narrative that...

The intriguing world of archaeoastronomy - the study of ancient peoples' observations of the skies and the impact of what they saw on their cultural evolution - is the focus of this eminently readable and authoritative survey. Author E. C. Krupp, an astronomer, is the director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. He is one of the world's greatest experts on archaeoastronomy, and the author of numerous books including Beyond the...