Civilizations

Description

Erudite, wide-ranging, a work of dazzling scholarship written with extraordinary flair, Civilizations redefines the subject that has fascinated historians from Thucydides to Gibbon to Spengler to Fernand Braudel: the nature of civilization. To the author, Oxford historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a society's relationship to climate, geography, and ecology are paramount in determining its degree of success. "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations," he writes, "it is arranged environment by environment, rather than. By. Or society by society." Thus, for example, tundra civilizations of Ice Age Europe are linked with those of the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest, the Mississippi Mound Builders with the deforesters of 11th-century Europe. Civilizations brilliantly connects the world of ecologist, geologist, and geographer with the panorama of cultural history. - Back cover.

First Sentence

In a dim, grim square in downtown Providence, a few blocks from where I was writing these lines, workmen were installing an ice rink between embarrassingly empty office blocks.

Subjects

Other Editions

• CivilizationsHardcoverMacmillan2000-01-01
• CivilizationsPaperbackPan Books2001-10-12
• CivilizationsPaperbackFree Press2002-06-01