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  • Published: 1 August 2005
  • ISBN: 9780563522669
  • Imprint: BBC Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

In Search Of The First Civilizations




Michael Wood explores ancient cultures to answer the intriguing question of what is civilization?

Five thousand years ago there began the most momentous revolution in human history. Starting in Mesopotamia, city civilization emerged for the first time on earth, to be followed in Egypt, India, China and the Americas. The ideals of these ancient civilizations still shape the lives of the majority of mankind. In Search of the First Civilizations (previously published as Legacy) asks the intriguing question: what is civilization? Did it mean the same to the Chinese, the Indians and the Greeks? What can the values of the ancient cultures teach us today? And do the ideals of the West - a latecomer to civilization - really have universal validity? In this fascinating historical search, Michael Wood explores these ancient cultures, looking for their essential character and their continuing legacy. A brilliant exploration. Sunday Times Well-written, gorgeous and guaranteed to induce thought... Wood takes great care to put everything in a large historical perspective, which is actually more disturbing than comforting. New York Post

  • Published: 1 August 2005
  • ISBN: 9780563522669
  • Imprint: BBC Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

Michael Wood

Michael Wood is the author of Stendhal, America in the Movies, Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (also available in Pimlico). He writes film and literary criticism for the London Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review and other publications. He studied Modern Languages at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was later a Fellow. He taught for along time at Columbia University in New York and then at the University of Exeter. He is currently Professor of English at Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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