"Accurst be he that first invented war," wrote Christopher Marlowe--a declaration that most of us would take as a literary, not literal, construction. But in this sweeping overview of the rise of civilization, Robert O'Connell finds that war is indeed an invention--an institution that arose due to very specific historical circumstances, an institution that now verges on extinction.
In Ride of the Second Horseman, O'Connell probes the distant human past to show how and why war arose. He begins with a definition that distinguishes between war and mere feuding: war involves group rather than individual issues, political or economic goals, and direction by some governmental structure, carried out with the intention of lasting results. With this definition, he finds that ants are the only other creatures that conduct it--battling other colonies for territory and slaves. But ants, unlike humans, are driven by their genes; in humans, changes in our culture and subsistence patterns, not our genetic hardware, brought the rise of organized warfare. O'Connell draws on anthropology and archeology to locate the rise of war sometime after the human transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, when society split between farmers and pastoralists. Around 5500 BC, these pastoralists initiated the birth of war with raids on Middle Eastern agricultural settlements. The farmers responded by ringing their villages with walls, setting off a process of further social development, intensified combat, and ultimately the rise of complex urban societies dependent upon warfare to help stabilize what amounted to highly volatile population structures, beset by frequent bouts of famine and epidemic disease. In times of overpopulation, the armies either conquered new lands or self-destructed, leaving fewer mouths to feed. In times of underpopulation, slaves were taken to provide labor. O'Connell explores the histories of the civilizations of ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Assyria, China, and the New World, showing how war came to each and how it adapted to varying circumstances. On the other hand, societies based on trade employed war much more selectively and pragmatically. Thus, Minoan Crete, long protected from marauding pastoralists, developed a wealthy mercantile society marked by unmilitaristic attitudes, equality between men and women, and a relative absence of class distinctions. In Assyria, by contrast, war came to be an end in itself, in a culture dominated by male warriors.
Despite the violence in the world today, O'Connell finds reason for hope. The industrial revolution broke the old patterns of subsistence: war no longer serves the demographic purpose it once did. Fascinating and provocative, Ride of the Second Horseman offers a far-reaching tour of human history that suggests the age-old cycle of war may now be near its end.

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18,1 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Robert L. O'Connell - Ride of the Second Horseman; The Birth and Death of War (1997).pdf

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Doug Macdougall - Nature's Clocks; How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (2008).jpg

When most people read about dating an ancient artifact, we think of carbon-14 dating. But as earth scientist Macdougall (Frozen Earth) tells readers, carbon dating works only if the object contains carbon, and then it can't be more than about 50,000 years old. Many other elements are radioactive, allowing, for example, for a potassium-argon dating system of volcanic and Precambrian rocks, and other applications in studying archeology and human evolution. Macdougall says that scientists have used these various radiometric dating systems for research as far-flung as dating the age of the solar system, figuring out when humans immigrated to the North America and when the Neanderthals died out, determining that a huge tsunami was created by a massive earthquake off the Northwest Pacific Coast in 1700 and nailing down the age of the Shroud of Turin (it dates to the Middle Ages, though controversy persists). Science buffs from all fields along with general readers will find this a helpful handbook on how we are now able to travel to the distant past. B&w photos, line drawings, map.

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1,8 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Doug Macdougall - Nature's Clocks; How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (2008).pdf

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Louise Lyle, David McCallam - Histoires de la Terr e; Earth Sciences and French Culture 1740-1940 (20 08).jpg

This collection of essays explores how Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments in the earth sciences and related fields (paleontology, mining, archeology, seismology, oceanography, evolution, etc.) impacted on contemporary French culture. They reveal that geological ideas were a much more pervasive and influential cultural force than has hitherto been supposed. From the mid-eighteenth century, with the publication of Buffon’s seminal Théorie de la Terre (1749), until the early twentieth century, concepts and figures drawn from the earth sciences inspired some of the most important French philosophers, novelists, political theorists, historians and popularizers of science of the time. This book charts the original and influential ways in which French writers and thinkers, such as Buffon, d’Holbach, Balzac, Sand, Verne, Gide and Malraux, exploited the earth sciences for very different ends. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of French literature in the modern period, cultural historians of modern France, scholars of European studies, of French political history, of the History of Ideas or the History of Science as well as researchers in landscape and physical geography.

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4,5 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Louise Lyle, David McCallam - Histoires de la Terr e; Earth Sciences and French Culture 1740-1940 (20 08).pdf

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Eric Temple Bell - The Search for Truth (2005).jpg

1934. Contents: Looking Forward; Case Histories; The Great Pyramid; The Ancient Cambodians; The Infant Prodigy; The Treaty of Croton; Paralyzed and Petrified; Through the Tunnel; Bogged; Escape; Heathen Gods; Science and Religiosity; Old Clo'; The Great Emancipator; The Fourth Dimension; The Last Idol; Retrospect; and The Priesthood of Science.

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2,2 MB
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Eric Temple Bell - The Search for Truth (2005).djvu

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Jean-Jacques Subrenat - Estonia; Identity and Inde pendence (2004).jpg

In the span of only seventy years, Estonia first proclaimed its independence, was occupied and deprived of its sovereignty, saw many of its citizens deported, and yet managed to recover its independence. How did this small nation keep its language and traditions alive during half a century of occupation, and how did it maintain such a vivid sense of identity? For the first time in English, this book gives a comprehensive view of the events which shaped the destiny of contemporary Estonia. The Editor, Jean-Jacques Subrenat, has called upon an unusually broad spectrum of the best experts (in history, archeology, political science, genetics, literature), but also on some of the leaders who took part in the rebuilding of Estonia, to offer more than a history, rather a unique testimony on a nation reborn.
Estonia: Identity and Independence provides rare insight into the many aspects of a country whose location in Northern Europe, within the European Union, and as a NATO ally, but also as a close neighbour of Russia, deserves the attention of scholars, journalists, and informed readers today.

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2,2 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Jean-Jacques Subrenat - Estonia; Identity and Inde pendence (2004).pdf

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Osprey - Campaign 169 - Somme 1 July 1916; Tragedy and Triumph (2006).jpg

Somme is still on record as the largest number of deaths in any one day in any war. This book explores the myths of this infamous battle and explains the underlying causes of the conflict, as well as the use of mines, tunnels, gas and flame throwers by the British in combination with innovative tactics such as smoke. Covering the first day of the Somme, Andrew Robertshaw analyses the battle through November, explaining how British battle tactics developed as a result of the experience of the Somme. He provides an overview of the events along the entire frontline, examining the actions of two British Corps, VIII at Serre and XIII at Montauban, to determine why the Somme epitomised the proverbial double-edged sword.

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Ewart Oakeshott - European Weapons and Armour; Fro m the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution (20 00).jpg

Both a work of scholarship, and a treasury of information, for anyone seeking a factual and vivid account of the story of arms from the Renaissance period to the Industrial Revolution. The author chooses as his starting-point the invasion of Italy by France in 1494, which sowed the dragon's teeth of all the successive European wars; the French invasion was to accelerate the trend towards new armaments and new methods of warfare. The author describes the development of the handgun and the pike, the use and style of staff-weapons, mace and axe and war-hammer, dagger and dirk and bayonet. He shows how armour attained its full Renaissance splendour and then suffered its sorry and inevitable decline, culminating in the Industrial Revolution, with its far-reaching effects on military armaments. Above all, he follows the long history of the sword, queen of weapons, to the late eighteenth century, when it finally ceased to form a part of a gentleman's every-day wear. Lavishly illustrated.EWART OAKESHOTT was one of the world's leading authorities on the arms and armour of medieval Europe. His other works on the subject include Records of the Medieval Sword and The Sword in the Age of Chivalry.

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20,1 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Ewart Oakeshott - European Weapons and Armour; Fro m the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution (20 00).pdf

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Weapon; A Visual History of Arms and Armor (2006).jpg

Weapons illustrated history
from ancient world (3000 bce–1000 ce), middle ages (1000–1500)
early modern world (1500–1775), revolutionary world (1775–1900)
modern world (1900–2006)

For 4,000 years weapons, and the warriors who used them, have acted as the cutting edge of history, using ax, spear, bow, sword, gun, and cannon to determine the rise of kingdoms and the fall of empires.
From the stone axes of the earliest warfare to the heavy artillery of today's modern armies, this awe-inspiring book portrays for the first time the entire spectrum of weaponry.
A spectacular, unprecedented visual reference to the design, function and history of arms and armor from around the world. Combines specially commissioned photography and sophisticated design with authoritative text and exhaustive coverage. Beautifully photographed and richly detailed catalogues display - often at actual size - all the major types of weapon, from spears to machine-guns.
Profiles the warriors who have deployed the weapons to devastating effect, from the Roman legionary to the US Navy Seal.
Includes features that showcase individual weapons in stunning detail.

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73,5 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Weapon; A Visual History of Arms and Armor (2006).pdf

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10 wrz 18 22:03

Elaine S. Abelson - When Ladies Go A-Thieving; Mid dle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (1992).jpg

All History - Elaine S. Abelson - When Ladies Go A-Thieving Middle-...ss Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store 1992.jpg

This book focuses on middle-class urban women as participants in new forms of consumer culture. Within the special world of the department store, women found themselves challenged to resist the enticements of consumption. Many succumbed, buying both what they needed and what they desired, but also stealing what seemed so readily available. Pitted against these middle-class women were the management, detectives, and clerks of the department stores. Abelson argues that in the interest of concealing this darker side of consumerism, women of the middle class, but not those of the working class, were allowed to shoplift and plead incapacitating illness--kleptomania. The invention of kleptomania by psychiatrists and the adoption of this ideology of feminine weakness by retailers, newspapers, the general public, the accused women themselves, and even the courts reveals the way in which a gender analysis allowed proponents of consumer capitalism to mask its contradictions.

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17,7 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Elaine S. Abelson - When Ladies Go A-Thieving; Mid dle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (1992).pdf

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10 wrz 18 22:03

John Clements - Renaissance Swordsmanship; The Ill ustrated Book Of Rapiers And Cut And Thrust Swords And Their Use (1997).jpg

All History - John Clements - Renaissance Swordsmanship The Illustr...Rapiers And Cut And Thrust Swords And Their Use 1997.jpg

This is the most thorough work ever about historical swordsmanship. It is both a general reference and an instructional guide for advanced and beginning sword enthusiasts, students of military history and martial artists. Includes rare historical info and 100 original drawings.

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10 wrz 18 22:03

Lisle A. Rose - Power at Sea; The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918 (2006).jpg

The twentieth century was preeminently an age of warring states and collapsing empires. Industrialism brought not peace but the sword. And the tip of that sword was sea power. In this first volume of "Power at Sea", Rose recalls the early twentieth-century world of emerging, predatory industrial nations engaging in the last major scramble for global markets and empire. In such times, an imposing war fleet was essential to both national security and international prestige. Battleship navies became pawns of power politics, and between 1890 and 1914 four of them - Britain's Royal Navy, the Imperial German Navy, the Japanese Navy, and the U.S. Navy - set the tone and rhythm of international life. Employing a global canvas, Rose portrays the frantic naval race between Britain and Germany that did so much to bring about the First World War; he takes us aboard America's Great White Fleet as it circumnavigated the world between 1907 and 1909, leaving in its wake both goodwill and jealousy; he details Japan's growing naval and military power and the hunger for unlimited expansion that resulted. Important naval battles were fought in those days of ostensible peace, and Rose brings to life the encounters of still young and relatively small industrial fighting fleets at Manila Bay and Tsushima. He also takes us into the huge naval factories where the engines of war were forged. He invites us aboard the imperial battleships and battle cruisers, exploring the dramatically divided worlds of the officers' lordly wardroom with its clublike atmosphere and the often foul and fetid enlisted men's quarters. The Age of Navalism climaxed in the epic First World War Battle of Jutland, in which massive guns and maneuvering dreadnoughts determined that Imperial Germany would become the latest in a line of ambitious naval powers that failed to shake Britannia's rule of the waves. Germany's subsequent use of a revolutionary new strategy, unrestricted submarine warfare, nearly brought Britain to its knees, reduced the level of naval combat to barbarism, and brought the United States into the war with its own substantial navy, ultimately turning the tide of battle.

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2,8 MB
10 wrz 18 22:03

Lisle A. Rose - Power at Sea; The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918 (2006).pdf

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10 wrz 18 22:03

Robert Drews - Early Riders; The Beginnings of Mou nted Warfare in Asia and Europe (2004).jpg

In this wide-ranging and often controversial book, Robert Drews examines the question of the origins of man's relations with the horse. He questions the belief that on the Eurasian steppe men were riding in battle as early as 4000 BC, and suggests that it was not until around 900 BC that men anywhere - whether in the Near East and the Aegean or on the steppes of Asia - were proficient enough to handle a bow, sword or spear while on horseback. After establishing when, where, and most importantly why good riding began, Drews goes on to show how riding raiders terrorized the civilized world in the seventh century BC, and how central cavalry was to the success of the Median and Persian empires.
Drawing on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence, this is the first book devoted to the question of when horseback riders became important in combat. Comprehensively illustrated, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of civilization in Eurasia, and the development of man's military relationship with the horse.

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Edward Harper Parker - Ancient China Simplified (2 010).jpg

The upshot of it was that in 771 B.C. the Emperor was killed by the Tartars in battle, and it was only by securing the military assistance of the semi-Tartar Warden of the Marches that the imperial dynasty was saved. As it was, the Emperor's capital was permanently moved east from the immediate neighbourhood of what we call Si-ngan Fu in Shen Si province to the immediate neighbourhood of Ho-nan Fu in the modern Ho Nan province; and as a reward for his services the Warden was granted nearly the whole of the original imperial patrimony west of the Yellow River bend and on both sides of the Wei Valley.

This was also in the year 771 B.C., and this is really one of the great pivot-points in Chinese history, of equal weight with the almost contemporaneous founding of Rome, and the gradual substitution of a Roman centre for a Greek centre in the development and civilization of the Far West.

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Edward Harper Parker - Ancient China Simplified (2 010).epub

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Leigh Dale and Helen Gilbert - Economies of Repres entation, 1790-2000; Colonialism and Commerce (20 07).jpg

Though postcolonialism has emerged as one of the most significant theoretical movements in literary and cultural studies, scant attention has been paid to the importance of trade and trade relations to debates about culture. Focusing on the past two centuries, this volume investigates the links among trade, colonialism, and forms of representation, posing the question, 'What is the historical or modern relationship between economic inequality and imperial patterns of representation and reading?'Rather than focusing on a particular industry or type of industry, the contributors take up the issue of how various economies have been represented in aboriginal art; in literature by North American, Caribbean, Portuguese, South African, First Nations, Australian, British, and aboriginal authors; and in a diverse range of writings that includes travel diaries, missionary texts, the findings of the Leprosy Investigation Commission, early medical accounts and media representations of HIV/AIDS, and 'treaties' with Australian aborigines.Examining trade in commodities as various as illicit drugs, liquor, bananas, tourism, adventure fiction, and modern aboriginal art, as well as cultural exchanges in politics, medicine, and literature, the multiplicity of the essays reflect the widespread origins of the contributors themselves, who are based throughout the English-speaking world. Taken as a whole, this book contests the commonplace view promoted by some modern economists - that trade in and of itself has a leveling effect, equalising cultures, places, and peoples - demonstrating instead the ways in which commerce has created and exacerbated differences in power.

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Leigh Dale and Helen Gilbert - Economies of Repres entation, 1790-2000; Colonialism and Commerce (20 07).pdf

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10 wrz 18 22:03

Florene S. Memegalos - George Goring (1608-1657); Caroline courtier and royalist general (2007).jpg

George Goring was in many ways the archetypal cavalier, often portrayed as possessing all the worst characteristics associated with the followers of King Charles I. He drank copiously, dressed and entertained lavishly, gambled excessively, abandoned his wife frequently, and was quick to resort to swordplay when he felt his honour was at stake. Yet, he was also an active Member of Parliament and a respected soldier, who learnt his trade on the continent during the Dutch Wars, and put it to good use in support of the Royalist cause during the English Civil War. In this, the first modern biography of Goring, the main events of his life are interwoven with the wider history of his age. Beginning with his family background in Sussex, it charts his successes at court and exploits in the service of the Dutch, culminating in his experiences at the siege of Breda in 1637, and then his part in the Bishops' Wars. However it is his key role as a Royalist general during the Civil War, and his subsequent exile during the Commonwealth period, that are the major focus of the book. This fascinating and illuminating account of Goring's life, character and actions, provides not only a fresh examination of this contentious figure, but also reveals much about English society and culture in the first half of the seventeenth century.

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5,1 MB
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Florene S. Memegalos - George Goring (1608-1657); Caroline courtier and royalist general (2007).pdf

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10 wrz 18 22:03

Janet Kamphorst - In Praise of Death; History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia) (2008).jpg

This study documents the historical and religious meaning of battle death in the desert regions of India and Pakistan. It offers new insights into the religious symbolism underlying martial ideals and identity politics with an analysis of heroic and epic genres and the literary-historical processes that lead to the deification of warrior-heroes in South Asia.By describing the different degrees of narrative importance that poets attached to battle-death, the author suggests new ways of interpreting the region's warlike past.

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10,7 MB
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Janet Kamphorst - In Praise of Death; History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia) (2008).pdf

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Anthony F. D'Elia - A Sudden Terror; The Plot to M urder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (2009).jpg

In 1468, on the final night of Carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat enthroned above the boisterous crowd, when a scuffle caught his eye. His guards had intercepted a mysterious stranger trying urgently to convey a warning—conspirators were lying in wait to slay the pontiff. Twenty humanist intellectuals were quickly arrested, tortured on the rack, and imprisoned in separate cells in the damp dungeon of Castel Sant’Angelo.
Anthony D’Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks. Using newly discovered sources, he shows why the pope targeted the humanists, who were seen as dangerously pagan in their Epicurean morals and their Platonic beliefs about the soul and insurrectionist in their support of a more democratic Church. Their fascination with Sultan Mehmed II connected them to the Ottoman Turks, enemies of Christendom, and the love of the classical world tied them to recent rebellious attempts to replace papal rule with a republic harking back to the glorious days of Roman antiquity.
From the cosmetic-wearing, parrot-loving pontiff to the Turkish sultan, savage in war but obsessed with Italian culture, D’Elia brings to life a Renaissance world full of pageantry, mayhem, and conspiracy and offers a fresh interpretation of humanism as a dynamic communal movement.

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brzeska11 napisano 24.11.2022 15:39

Polecam, książki o Wikingach, archeologia,rekonstrukcja średniowiecza, bazy znalezisk, wczesne średniowiecze: Hedeby, Archeologia wikingów

moyade8805 napisano 27.01.2023 09:08

Super chomik

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Super chomik, wartościowe pozycje dla emeryta 84!

mona7551 napisano 27.11.2023 21:53

dzięki super zbiory zapraszam do siebie

Najlepszyy6979 napisano 28.12.2024 11:52

Zapraszam

MOONLIGHTNEO napisano 2.06.2025 05:20

FREE TRANSFER

Im więcej pobrań, tym więcej darmowego transferu możesz otrzymać!

magda.s3 napisano 15.09.2025 15:59

AUDIOBOOKI NOWOŚCI 2025 I HITY WYDAWNICZE EBOOKI różne formaty, NOWOŚCI, HITY, kryminał, reportaż, psychologia, psychiatria, thriller, klasyki gatunku, trudnodostępne perełki, zapraszam!

DELL_2026 napisano 29.03.2026 19:27