The Best World History Books 2025

1. Who Cut the Cheese?: A Cultural History of the Fart, (Paperback)

We've told you HOW TO SHIT IN THE WOODS. We've taken you UP SHIT CREEK. Now, we dare to ask the eternal question...WHO CUT THE CHEESE? Which is to say, what exactly is a fart? Why do we do it? Why do we hide it when we do it? And why do we find farts so darn funny? A cut above anything else on the subject, this book really lets go and tells all, getting to the bottom of these mysteries. Author Jim sniffs out a load of historical and scientific fart tales, then offers the kind of fun facts you'll be dying to let slip at social occasions, in chapters like "Fart Facts That Aren't Just Hot Air," "Gone with the Wind" (on famous movie farts), and "Le Petomane & the Art of the Fart" (on the most famous windbag in history). From fact to fiction to frivolous flatulence, this book is unquestionably a ripping good read.

Who Cut the Cheese?: A Cultural History of the Fart, (Paperback) Author: Ten Speed Press ISBN: 9781580080118 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1998-12-01 Page Count: 192

2. Queen Victoria's Little Wars, (Paperback)

Tells all the old stories of imperial heroism con brio. Noel Annan, New York Review of Books

Queen Victoria's Little Wars, (Paperback) Author: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393302356 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1985-06-01 Page Count: 432

3. Queen Victoria's Little Wars, (Paperback)

Tells all the old stories of imperial heroism con brio. Noel Annan, New York Review of Books

Queen Victoria's Little Wars, (Paperback) Author: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393302356 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1985-06-01 Page Count: 432

4. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, (Paperback)

Flesh and Stone is the story of the deepest parts of life--how women and men moved in public and private spaces, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed them, where they ate, how they dressed, the mores of bathing and of making love--all in the architecture of stone and space from ancient Athens to modern New York. Early in Flesh and Stone, Richard Sennett probes the ways in which the ancient Athenians experienced nakedness, and the relation of nakedness to the shape of the ancient city, its troubled politics, and the inequalities between men and women. The story then moves to Rome in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, exploring Roman beliefs in the geometrical perfection of the body. The second part of the book examines how Christian beliefs about the body related to the Christian city--the Venetian ghetto, cloisters, and markets in Paris. The final part of Flesh and Stone deals with what happened to urban space as modern scientific understanding of the body cut free from pagan and Christian beliefs. Flesh and Stone makes sense of our constantly evolving urban living spaces, helping us to build a common home for the increased diversity of bodies that make up the modern city.

Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, (Paperback) Author: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393313918 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1996-03-01 Page Count: 432

5. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, (Paperback)

Flesh and Stone is the story of the deepest parts of life--how women and men moved in public and private spaces, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed them, where they ate, how they dressed, the mores of bathing and of making love--all in the architecture of stone and space from ancient Athens to modern New York. Early in Flesh and Stone, Richard Sennett probes the ways in which the ancient Athenians experienced nakedness, and the relation of nakedness to the shape of the ancient city, its troubled politics, and the inequalities between men and women. The story then moves to Rome in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, exploring Roman beliefs in the geometrical perfection of the body. The second part of the book examines how Christian beliefs about the body related to the Christian city--the Venetian ghetto, cloisters, and markets in Paris. The final part of Flesh and Stone deals with what happened to urban space as modern scientific understanding of the body cut free from pagan and Christian beliefs. Flesh and Stone makes sense of our constantly evolving urban living spaces, helping us to build a common home for the increased diversity of bodies that make up the modern city.

Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, (Paperback) Author: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393313918 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1996-03-01 Page Count: 432

6. World Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, Vol. 2 by Phillip Lee Ralph

World Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, Vol. 2 by Phillip Lee Ralph. Features include: 9780393968811 0393968812, Paperback, 960 pages, Edition: 9. Published by: W. W. Norton & Company on 1997-07-05.

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7. World Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, Vol. 2 by Phillip Lee Ralph

World Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, Vol. 2 by Phillip Lee Ralph. Features include: 9780393968811 0393968812, Paperback, 960 pages, Edition: 9. Published by: W. W. Norton & Company on 1997-07-05.

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8. Hist of the Church The Penguin History of the Church, Book 3, (Paperback)

The beginning the sixteenth century brought growing pressure within the Western Church for Reformation. The popes could not hold Western Christendom together and there was confusion about Church reform. What some believed to be abuses others found acceptable. Nevertheless over the years three aims emerged: to reform the exactions of churchmen to correct errors of doctrines and to improve the moral awareness of society. As a result Western Europe divided into a Catholic South and Protestant North. Across the no man's land between them were fought the bitterest wars of religion in Christian historyThis third volume of 'The Penguin History of the Church' deals with the formative work of Erasmus Luther Zwingli and Calvin and analyses the special circumstances of the English Reformation as well as the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation

Hist of the Church The Penguin History of the Church, Book 3, (Paperback) Author: Penguin Group ISBN: 9780140137576 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1990-06-28 Page Count: 464

9. The Conquest of America (Paperback) by Professor Tzvetan Todorov

9780061320958. New condition. Trade paperback. Language: English. Pages: 288. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 288 p. Contains: Illustrations. A fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America, The Conquest of America has become a classic in its field. It offers an original interpretation of the discovery of America by Columbus and of the subsequent conquest, colonization, and destruction of Mexico and the Caribbean by the Spaniards at the beginning of the modern era. Using sixteenth-century sources, the distinguished French writer and critic Tzvetan Todorov examines the beliefs and behavior of both the Spanish conquistadors and the Aztecs, adversaries in a clash of cultures that resulted in the neat extermination of Mesoamerica's Indian population. Absorbing, intelligent, and responsible in its call for a much-needed dialogue between different cultures, The Conquest of America evokes a drama that set the pattern for much of the history of Western colonialism.

The Conquest of America

10. The Conquest of America (Paperback) by Professor Tzvetan Todorov

9780061320958. New condition. Trade paperback. Language: English. Pages: 288. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 288 p. Contains: Illustrations. A fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America, The Conquest of America has become a classic in its field. It offers an original interpretation of the discovery of America by Columbus and of the subsequent conquest, colonization, and destruction of Mexico and the Caribbean by the Spaniards at the beginning of the modern era. Using sixteenth-century sources, the distinguished French writer and critic Tzvetan Todorov examines the beliefs and behavior of both the Spanish conquistadors and the Aztecs, adversaries in a clash of cultures that resulted in the neat extermination of Mesoamerica's Indian population. Absorbing, intelligent, and responsible in its call for a much-needed dialogue between different cultures, The Conquest of America evokes a drama that set the pattern for much of the history of Western colonialism.

The Conquest of America

11. Lewis & Clark Expedition The Journals of Lewis and Clark, (Paperback)

An in-depth look at Lewis and Clark's historic expedition through the explorers' journals--America's "first report on the West" (Bernard DeVoto, Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar-historian of the American West). In 1803, the great expanse of the Louisiana Purchase was an empty canvas. Keenly aware that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward--and that a "Voyage of Discovery" would be necessary to determine the nature of the frontier--President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, Lewis mapped rivers, traced the principal waterways to the sea, and established the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept this journal: a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the native tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River, which has become an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.

Lewis & Clark Expedition The Journals of Lewis and Clark, (Paperback) Author: Harper Perennial ISBN: 9780395859964 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1997-04-30 Page Count: 576