Discover the cultural and political riches of Greece across 3,000 years, from classical might to modern rebirth. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. Philosophy, art, democracy, language, even computers—the glories of Greek civilization have shaped our world even more profoundly than we realize. Pericles and the Parthenon may be familiar, but what of Epaminondas, the Theban general who saved the Greek world from Spartan tyranny? Alexander the Great’s fame has rolled down the centuries, but the golden Hellenistic Age that followed is largely forgotten. “Byzantine” conjures decadence and deadly intrigue, yet the thousand-year empire that ruled from Constantinople and saved Europe twice from invasion was, in fact, Greek. Greece’s modern chapter, too, tells of triumph and calamity—from liberation and expansion to schism, homegrown dictatorship, Nazi occupation, and civil war. Today’s nation is battered by austerity, encroaching climate change, and a refugee crisis—yet unwavering in its ancient values. James Heneage captures the full Grecian drama in this riveting, short history, revealing Greece as the wellspring of Western civilization—and a model that may yet save modern democracy.

A complete history of the universe, spanning 13.8 billion years in an ultra-accessible, uncommonly illuminating, exhilarating chronicle of key events “Baker introduces us not only to the history of our species and our planet, but the history of our vast universe.”—from the foreword by John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and The Fault in Our Stars In this thrilling history, David Baker captures the longest-possible time span—from the Big Bang to the present day—in an astonishingly concise retelling. His impressive timeline includes the “rise of complexity” in the cosmos and the creation of the first atoms; the origin of all galaxies, stars, and our solar system; and the evolution of life on Earth, from tiny single-celled organisms to human beings. Weaving together insights across the sciences—including chemistry, physics, biology, archaeology, and anthropology—Baker answers the fundamental questions: How did time begin? Why does matter exist? What made life on Earth the way it is? He also argues that never before has life on Earth been forced to adjust to a changing climate so rapidly, nor has one species ever been responsible for such sudden change. Baker’s grand view offers the clearest picture of what may come next—and the role we can still play in our planet’s fate.

An accessible chronicle of how the Israel-Palestine conflict originated and developed over the past century. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. The ongoing struggle between Israel and Palestine is one of the most bitter conflicts in history, with profound global consequences. In this book, Middle East expert Michael Scott-Baumann succinctly describes its origins and charts its evolution from civil war to the present day. Each chapter offers a lucid explanation of the politics and ends with personal testimony from Palestinians and Israelis whose lives have been impacted by the dispute. While presenting competing interpretations, Scott-Baumann examines the key flash points, including the early role of the British, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Trump administration’s peace plan, pitched as “the deal of the century,” in 2020. He delineates both the nature of Israeli control over the Palestinian territories and Palestinian resistance—going to the heart of the clashes in recent decades. The result is an indispensable history, including a time line, glossary, and analysis of why efforts to restore peace have continually failed and what it will take to succeed.

This book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the history of modern Greece, with a new final chapter about Greek history and politics to the present day. 56 illustrations. 10 maps.

The full chronological sweep of democracy, from the assemblies of ancient Mesopotamia and Athens to present perils around the globe. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. This compact history unspools the tumultuous global story that began with democracy’s radical core idea: We can collaborate, as equals, to determine our own futures. Acclaimed political thinker John Keane traces how this concept emerged and evolved, from the earliest “assembly democracies” in Syria-Mesopotamia to European-style “electoral democracy” and to our uncertain present. Today, thanks to our always-on communication channels, governments answer not only to voters on Election Day but to intense scrutiny every day. This is “monitory democracy”—in Keane’s view, the most complex and vibrant model yet—but it’s not invulnerable. Monitory democracy comes with its own pathologies, and the new despotism wields powerful warning systems, from social media to election monitoring, against democracy itself. At this urgent moment, when despots in countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia reject the promises of democratic power-sharing, Keane mounts a bold defense of a precious global ideal.

For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas. Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation? A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.

This book examines the present crisis of Greece’s political economy as a crisis of stateness, tackling the domestic as well as the international dimensions. It represents the first attempt by Greek academics to put forward a theoretically-informed, interdisciplinary analysis of Greece’s fiscal, economic, and political crisis. The approach aims to fill a major gap, combining insights from comparative politics, political economy, international relations theory, and legal-institutional analysis, in a theoretically informed account of the Greek case in comparative and theoretical perspective. The book tackles the issue of the possible next steps for the EU under the influence of the crisis of the eurozone, including a thorough analysis of national sovereignty seen from a domestic and an international point of view, focusing on critical processes in the international arena such as interdependency and dependency, while a legal-institutional chapter demonstrates the erratic way in which Greek government dealt with sovereign debt. The project comes at the right time in order to address a highly contentious chapter in the political development of the Greek state and of the European South. As the crisis in the eurozone’s weaker periphery unfolds, Lavdas, Litsas, and Skiadas use the Greek crisis in order to address a much larger and critical issue: the role and predicament of stateness in the developing EU.

In Greek History, someone has said, little that happened mattered much; it was what the Greeks thought that counted. This, broadly speaking, is the truth; and here I have tried to lay the main emphasis on Greek ideas, setting them against the background of historic events. Obviously the best clue to their understanding is to be found in what the Greeks themselves wrote; and, though no English version can be an adequate substitute, I have given in translation whatever passages appear to me most revealing. With these it has been my object to convey effectively the author’s meaning rather than slavishly to reproduce his phraseology; and I have taken, I confess, some liberty with the task, abbreviating by frequent omissions of words, clauses and even whole sentences, occasionally elaborating to bring out the full sense, and above all recasting the original syntactic construction in approximation to our own modern idiom. In the illustrations, similarly, I have here and there allowed myself the licence of reconstruction when details have suffered through accident or age. I have to record with gratitude my great debt to Mrs. Eric James and Mr. W. H. Plommer and Mr. L. F. R. Audemars for valuable criticisms and suggestions. My thanks are also due to Messrs. Methuen, the publishers of my “History of Greece,” for permission to produce this complementary volume. It may be that the reader will be encouraged to further study of the subject; and on certain points—few among many which limits of space have compelled me to summarize or omit—I have ventured to insert a cross-reference.