How the world works

History & civilisation

The long story of how we got here — empires, migrations and turning points.

Read your way in

  1. A Roman election survived on a wall — Mary Beard · SPQR: A History of Ancient RomeA glance
  2. Rome kept changing who counted as Roman — Mary Beard · SPQR: A History of Ancient RomeA glance
  3. A dark soil records deliberate work — Charles C. Mann · 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before ColumbusA glance
  4. Disease travelled through connected worlds — Charles C. Mann · 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before ColumbusA glance
  5. The Great Migration was not one departure — Isabel Wilkerson · The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great MigrationA glance
  6. A train ticket was not a simple escape — Isabel Wilkerson · The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great MigrationA glance
  7. The salt cellar once marked rank — Mark Kurlansky · Salt: A World HistoryA glance
  8. A salt tax left a paper trail — Mark Kurlansky · Salt: A World HistoryA glance
  9. Turn the usual world map sideways — Peter Frankopan · The Silk Roads: A New History of the WorldA glance
  10. A port can explain more than a border — Peter Frankopan · The Silk Roads: A New History of the WorldA glance
  11. The castaways returned with rival truths — David Grann · The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and MurderA glance
  12. Scurvy turned distance into bodily damage — David Grann · The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and MurderA glance

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The books behind it

  • Mary Beard, 2015. Why this book: Beard makes Roman power legible while keeping its evidence gaps and arguments visible.
  • Charles C. Mann, 2005. Why this book: A vivid route into the scholarship that redrew pre-Columbian American history.
  • Isabel Wilkerson, 2010. Why this book: Wilkerson joins intimate lives to the scale and structure of a mass migration.
  • Mark Kurlansky, 2002. Why this book: A small commodity becomes a readable guide to trade, taxation and preservation.
  • Peter Frankopan, 2015. Why this book: Frankopan recentres Eurasian exchange and invites readers to redraw familiar maps.
  • David Grann, 2023. Why this book: Grann reconstructs competing testimony without sanding away its contradictions.