Starvard · The Masters Library

The Story of Mankind

di Hendrik Willem van Loon · 65 parti · about 10 hours 14 minutes di lettura

Ciao, mi chiamo Finn e ti aiuterò a capire questo libro.

Eccolo, spiegato come se avessi 10 anni:

Immagina l'intera storia delle persone raccontata come un unico lungo racconto, a partire dai primi esseri umani che fabbricavano i loro primi strumenti. Hendrik van Loon scrisse questo libro per lettori curiosi di ogni età, e lo racconta con una voce amichevole e parole semplici. Incontrerai Egizi, Greci, Romani, cavalieri, esploratori e inventori, e vedrai come ogni epoca nacque da quella prima. Sembra un nonno saggio che ti racconta tutto.

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Il libro completo si legge in inglese. Ecco tutti i capitoli:

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Capitoli

Foreword7 min Chapter 1: The Setting of the Stage8 min Chapter 2: Our Earliest Ancestors4 min Chapter 3: Prehistoric Man Begins to Make Things for Himself4 min Chapter 4: The Egyptians Invent the Art of Writing and the Record of History Begins7 min Chapter 5: The Beginning of Civilisation in the Valley of the Nile5 min Chapter 6: The Rise and Fall of Egypt3 min Chapter 7: Mesopotamia--the Second Centre of Eastern Civilisation1 min Chapter 8: The Sumerian Nail Writers, Whose Clay Tablets Tell Us the Story of Assyria and Babylonia, the Great Semitic Melting-pot5 min Chapter 9: The Story of Moses, the Leader of the Jewish People4 min Chapter 10: The Phoenicians Who Gave Us Our Alphabet2 min Chapter 11: The Indo-european Persians Conquer the Semitic and the Egyptian World3 min Chapter 12: The People of the Aegean Sea Carried the Civilisation of Old Asia Into the Wilderness of Europe4 min Chapter 13: Meanwhile the Indo-european Tribe of the Hellenes Was Taking Possession of Greece3 min Chapter 14: The Greek Cities That Were Really States5 min Chapter 15: The Greeks Were the First People to Try the Difficult Experiment of Self-government5 min Chapter 16: How the Greeks Lived6 min Chapter 17: The Origins of the Theatre, the First Form of Public Amusement4 min Chapter 18: How the Greeks Defended Europe Against Asiatic Invasion and Drove the Persians Back Across the Aegean Sea7 min Chapter 19: How Athens and Sparta Fought a Long and Disastrous War for the Leadership of Greece3 min Chapter 20: Alexander the Macedonian Establishes a Greek World-empire, and What Became of This High Ambition3 min Chapter 21: A Short Summary of Chapters 1 to 204 min Chapter 22: The Semitic Colony of Carthage on the Northern Coast of Africa and the Indo-european City of Rome on the West Coast of Italy Fought Each Other for the Possession of the Western Mediterranean and Carthage Was Destroyed19 min Chapter 23: How Rome Happened3 min Chapter 24: How the Republic of Rome After Centuries of Unrest and Revolution Became an Empire15 min Chapter 25: The Story of Joshua of Nazareth, Whom the Greeks Called Jesus7 min Chapter 26: The Twilight of Rome8 min Chapter 27: How Rome Became the Centre of the Christian World10 min Chapter 28: Ahmed, the Camel-driver, Who Became the Prophet of the Arabian Desert and Whose Followers Almost Conquered the Entire Known World for the Greater Glory of Allah, the Only True God9 min Chapter 29: How Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, Came to Bear the Title of Emperor and Tried to Revive the Old Ideal of World-empire7 min Chapter 30: Why the People of the Tenth Century Prayed the Lord to Protect Them from the Fury of the Norsemen3 min Chapter 31: How Central Europe, Attacked from Three Sides, Became an Armed Camp and Why Europe Would Have Perished Without Those Professional Soldiers and Administrators Who Were Part of the Feudal System5 min Chapter 32: Chivalry4 min Chapter 33: The Strange Double Loyalty of the People of the Middle Ages and How It Led to Endless Quarrels Between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors9 min Chapter 34: But All These Different Quarrels Were Forgotten When the Turks Took the Holy Land, Desecrated the Holy Places and Interfered Seriously with the Trade from East to West. Europe Went Crusading6 min Chapter 35: Why the People of the Middle Ages Said That "City Air Is Free Air"16 min Chapter 36: How the People of the Cities Asserted Their Right to Be Heard in the Royal Councils of Their Country7 min Chapter 37: What the People of the Middle Ages Thought of the World in Which They Happened to Live12 min Chapter 38: How the Crusades Once More Made the Mediterranean a Busy Centre of Trade and How the Cities of the Italian Peninsula Became the Great Distributing Centre for the Commerce with Asia and Africa10 min Chapter 39: People Once More Dared to Be Happy Just Because They Were Alive. They Tried to Save the Remains of the Older and More Agreeable Civilisation of Rome and Greece and They Were So Proud of Their Achievements That They Spoke of a Renaissance or Re-birth of Civilisation20 min Chapter 40: The People Began to Feel the Need of Giving Expression to Their Newly Discovered Joy of Living. They Expressed Their Happiness in Poetry and in Sculpture and in Architecture and in Painting and in the Books They Printed7 min Chapter 41: But Now That People Had Broken Through the Bonds of Their Narrow Mediaeval Limitations, They Had to Have More Room for Their Wanderings. The European World Had Grown Too Small for Their Ambitions. It Was the Time of the Great Voyages of Discovery20 min Chapter 42: Concerning Buddha and Confucius14 min Chapter 43: The Progress of the Human Race Is Best Compared to a Gigantic Pendulum Which Forever Swings Forward and Backward. The Religious Indifference and the Artistic and Literary Enthusiasm of the Renaissance Were Followed by the Artistic and Literary Indifference and the Religious Enthusiasm of the Reformation17 min Chapter 44: The Age of the Great Religious Controversies23 min Chapter 45: How the Struggle Between the "Divine Right" of Kings and the Less Divine but More Reasonable "Right of Parliament" Ended Disastrously for King Charles II24 min Chapter 46: In France on the Other Hand the "Divine Right of Kings" Continued with Greater Pomp and Splendour Than Ever Before and the Ambition of the Ruler Was Only Tempered by the Newly Invented Law of the "Balance of Power"7 min Chapter 47: The Story of the Mysterious Moscovite Empire Which Suddenly Burst Upon the Grand Political Stage of Europe10 min Chapter 48: Russia and Sweden Fight Many Wars to Decide Who Shall Be the Leading Power of North-eastern Europe6 min Chapter 49: The Extraordinary Rise of a Little State in a Dreary Part of Northern Germany, Called Prussia6 min Chapter 50: How the Newly Founded National or Dynastic States of Europe Tried to Make Themselves Rich and What Was Meant by the Mercantile System5 min Chapter 51: At the End of the Eighteenth Century Europe Heard Strange Reports of Something Which Had Happened in the Wilderness; of the North American Continent. The Descendants of the Men Who Had Punished King Charles for His Insistence Upon His "Divine Rights" Added a New Chapter to the Old Story of the Struggle for Self-government10 min Chapter 52: The Great French Revolution Proclaims the Principles of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality Unto All the People of the Earth23 min Chapter 53: Napoleon18 min Chapter 54: As Soon as Napoleon Had Been Sent to St. Helena the Rulers Who So Often Had Been Defeated by the Hated "Corsican" Met at Vienna and Tried to Undo the Many Changes That Had Been Brought About by the French Revolution18 min Chapter 55: They Tried to Assure the World an Era of Undisturbed Peace by Suppressing All New Ideas. They Made the Police-spy the Highest Functionary in the State and Soon the Prisons of All Countries Were Filled with Those Who Claimed That People Have the Right to Govern Themselves as They See Fit13 min Chapter 56: The Love of National Independence, However Was Too Strong to Be Destroyed in This Way. The South Americans Were the First to Rebel Against the Reactionary Measures of the Congress of Vienna, Greece and Belgium and Spain and a Large Number of Other Countries of the European Continent Followed Suit and the Nineteenth Century Was Filled with the Rumour of Many Wars of Independence34 min Chapter 57: But While the People of Europe Were Fighting for Their National Independence, the World in Which They Lived Had Been Entirely Changed by a Series of Inventions, Which Had Made the Clumsy Old Steam Engine of the 18th Century the Most Faithful and Efficient Slave of Man14 min Chapter 58: But the New Engines Were Very Expensive and Only People of Wealth Could Afford Them. The Old Carpenter or Shoemaker Who Had Been His Own Master in His Little Workshop Was Obliged to Hire Himself Out to the Owners of the Big Mechanical Tools, and While He Made More Money Than Before, He Lost His Former Independence and He Did Not Like That8 min Chapter 59: The General Introduction of Machinery Did Not Bring About the Era of Happiness and Prosperity Which Had Been Predicted by the Generation Which Saw the Stage Coach Replaced by the Railroad. Several Remedies Were Suggested but None of These Quite Solved the Problem12 min Chapter 60: But the World Had Undergone Another Change Which Was of Greater Importance Than Either the Political or the Industrial Revolutions. After Generations of Oppression and Persecution, the Scientist Had at Last Gained Liberty of Action and He Was Now Trying to Discover the Fundamental Laws Which Govern the Universe8 min Chapter 61: A Chapter of Art22 min Chapter 62: A Chapter Which Ought to Give You a Great Deal of Political Information About the Last Fifty Years, but Which Really Contains Several Explanations and a Few Apologies15 min Chapter 63: The Great War Which Was Really the Struggle for a New and Better World15 min As It Ever Shall Be1 min