Feel free to add to the list. Here are few to get it started.
The Birth of Plenty, How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created by William J. Bernstein
The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Feel free to add to the list. Here are few to get it started.
The Birth of Plenty, How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created by William J. Bernstein
The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
eh ? Just a few books from out of nowhere and we are supposed to add to it ? And most of those doesn't even look like discussing civilization at all (not the game but the term)
Fair enough. Maybe the idea will be of interest at some future time.
I'm new to playing Civ and the demo is all I've had for a few days. I heard of the game in the past but never tried it.
Originally Posted by Imperial Dane
ahh righto. But i would say looking for information about civilization as it is is gonna be a bit hard, everybody has it's opinion and where do you start ? To be honest it would just be easier to read history on different civilizations throughout time and get a picture from there...
Guns, Germs and Steel was not a very useful book.
As for the OP's interest in books on civilization, I highly recommend Victor Davis Hanson's acclaimed books Ripples of Battle and Carnage and Culture. These titles provide extraordinarily useful insights into the role that warfare has played in human civilization.
I also recommend Thomas Pangle and Peter Ahrensdorf's book Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace. Pangle and Ahrensdorf do a great job of navigating you through some of the most provocative and enduring aspects of thinkers such as Cicero, Kant, and Aquinas to name a few. For the serious scholar of civilization--particularly Western civilization, this book of essays is must-read material.
(NB: If you're the closed-minded hippy type that considers war and civilization to be antithetical concepts, then serious scholarship such as Victor Hanson isn't for you.)
Amy Chua has two very good boks:
"World on Fire"
"Day of Empire"
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