With the devastating effects of Covid-19 still rattling the foundations of our global civilization, we live in unprecedented times, or so we might think. But pandemics have been a constant presence throughout human history, as humans and disease have lived side by side for millennia. Over the centuries, our ability to react to these sweeping killers has evolved, most notably through the development of vaccines. The story of disease eradication, however,...

"With eloquence, wit, passion, and irony, The American Future traces the history of an idea: that of our national destiny…. A book of beautiful writing, peppered with wisecracks, slashed with rapier thrusts." -Philadelphia Inquirer A De Tocqueville for the 21st century, Simon Schama, NBCC Award winning author of Rough Crossings offers an essential, historical, long view analysis of the American character in The American Future. Shama examines four...

In this magnificently illustrated cultural history-the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews-Simon Schema details the story of the Jewish people, tracing their experience across three millennia, from their beginnings as an ancient tribal people to the opening of the new world in 1492It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance in the face of destruction, of creativity in the face of oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation...

Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, Schama re-creates in precise detail a nation's mental state. He tells of bloody uprisings and beached whales, of the cult of hygiene and the plague of tobacco, of...

Acclaimed historian and award-winning author Simon Schama offers an essential historical perspective on the crucial 2008 presidential election and its importance for reclaiming America's original ideal. It's not business as usual. Cultural hostilities more irreconcilable than any since the Civil War have divided America in two. In November 2008, the American people elected a new president, feeling more anxious about the future of the nation than at...

Explore the connections and rivalries between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic empires that experienced their own cultural flowering in the 15th and 16th centuries. Both spheres were open to influences flowing both ways.

Explore one of humanity's deepest artistic urges: the depiction of nature. But landscape painting is seldom a straightforward portrayal of observed nature; it's a projection of dreams, idylls, and refuges - the elusive paradise on earth.

Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in the forging of humanity itself. Images and artifacts found in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and South America testify to the urge to develop civilizations.