Knowledge = Power

A riveting account of ancient  Rome's imperial bodyguard, the select band of soldiers who wielded the  power to make - or destroy - the emperors they served. Founded by Augustus around 27 BC, the elite Praetorian Guard was  tasked with the protection of the emperor and his family. As the  centuries unfolded, however, Praetorian soldiers served not only as  protectors and enforcers but also as powerful political players.  Fiercely loyal to some emperors, they vied with others and ruthlessly  toppled those who displeased them, including Caligula, Nero, Pertinax,  and many more. Guy de la Bédoyère provides a compelling first full  narrative history of the Praetorians, whose dangerous ambitions ceased  only when Constantine permanently disbanded them. De la Bédoyère introduces Praetorians of all echelons, from prefects  and messengers to artillery experts and executioners. He explores the  delicate position of emperors for whom prestige and guile were the only  defenses against bodyguards hungry for power. Folding fascinating  details into a broad assessment of the Praetorian era, the author sheds  new light on the wielding of power in the greatest of the ancient  world's empires.

A classic of Japanese history, this audiobook is the preeminent work on the history of Japan. Newly revised and updated, A History of Japan is a single-volume complete history of the nation of Japan. Starting in ancient Japan during its early pre-history period, A History of Japan covers every important aspect of history and culture through feudal  Japan to the post-Cold War period and collapse of the bubble economy in  the early 1990s. Recent findings shed additional light on the origins of  Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture. Also included is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese religion,  Japanese arts, Japanese culture, and the Japanese people from the sixth  century BC to the present. This contemporary classic, now updated and  revised, continues to be an essential work in Japanese studies. A History of Japan, Revised Edition includes: Archaic Japan - including Yamato, the creation of a unified state, the Nana Period, and the Heian period. Medieval Japan - including rule by the military houses, the failure  of Ashikaga rule, Buddhism, and the Kamakura and Muroachi periods. Early modern Japan - including Japanese feudalism, administration  under the Tokugawa, and society and culture in early modern Japan. Modern Japan - including the Meiji era and policies for  modernization, from consensus to crisis (1912-1937), and solutions  through force. This contemporary classic continues to be a central work in Japanese  studies and is a vital addition to the collection of any student or  enthusiast of Japanese history, Japanese culture, or the Japanese  language.

No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam.  It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes  terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war.  In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of  years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong’s short  history demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith is a much  more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.

John Brockman (editor) - The Universe

“A cracking read,  combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information.  . . . What’s remarkable is that it all fits together.”—Wall Street Journal “Successful  science writing tells a complete story of the ‘how’—the methodical  marvel building up to the ‘why’—and Randall does just that.”—New York Times Book Review “[Randall]  is a lucid explainer, street-wise and informal. Without jargon or  mathematics, she steers us through centuries of sometimes tortuous  astronomical history.”—The Guardian In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs,  Professor Lisa Randall, one of today’s most influential theoretical  physicists, takes readers on an intellectual adventure through the  history of the cosmos, showing how events in the farthest reaches of the  Universe created the conditions for life—and death—on our planet. Sixty-six  million years ago, an object the size of a city crashed into Earth,  killing off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the planet’s  species. Challenging the usual assumptions about the simple makeup of  the unseen material that constitutes 85% of the matter in the Universe,  Randall explains how a disk of dark matter in the Milky Way plane might  have triggered the cataclysm. But Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs does more than present a radical idea. With clarity and wit, it  explains the nature of the Universe, dark matter, the Milky Way galaxy,  comets, asteroids, and impacts. This breathtaking synthesis, illuminated  by pop culture references and social and political viewpoints, reveals  the deep relationships among the small and the large, the visible and  the hidden, as well as the astonishing beauty of the connections that  surround us. It’s impossible to read this book and look at either the  Earth or the sky again in the same way.

Who was Muhammad? What do we know historically, and does that differ from how he is seen by his followers and venerated today? Memories of Muhammad presents Muhammad as a lens through which to view both the genesis of  Islamic religion and the grand sweep of Islamic history—right  up to the hot button issues of the day, such as the spread of Islam,  holy wars, the status of women, the significance of Jerusalem, and  current tensions with Jews, Hindus and Christians. It also provides a  rare glimpse into how Muslims spiritually connect to God through their  Prophet, in the mosque, in the home, and even in cyberspace. This definitive biography of the founder of Islam by a leading  Muslim-American scholar, Omid Safi, will reveal invaluable new insights,  finally providing a fully three-dimensional portrait of Muhammad and  the one billion people who follow him today.

From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space  and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the  most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a  direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we  travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain  non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg  Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn  from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space  and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to  quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can  instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all,  regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and  revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has  discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos tackles perhaps the most mind-bending question in modern physics and cosmology: Is our universe the only universe? There  was a time when "universe" meant all there is. Everything. Yet, a  number of theories are converging on the possibility that our universe  may be but one among many parallel universes populating a vast  multiverse. Here, Briane Greene, one of our foremost physicists and  science writers, takes us on a breathtaking journey to a multiverse  comprising an endless series of big bangs, a multiverse with duplicates  of every one of us, a multiverse populated by vast sheets of spacetime, a  multiverse in which all we consider real are holographic illusions, and  even a multiverse made purely of math--and reveals the reality hidden  within each. Using his trademark wit and precision, Greene  presents a thrilling survey of cutting-edge physics and confronts the  inevitable question: How can fundamental science progress if great  swaths of reality lie beyond our reach? The Hidden Reality is a remarkable adventure through a world more vast and strange than anything we could have imagined.

The international bestseller that inspired a major Nova special and sparked a new understanding of the universe, now with a new preface and epilogue. Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away  layers of mystery to reveal a universe that consists of eleven  dimensions, where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all  matter―from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas―is  generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy. The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated  accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to  understanding how the universe works.

Best-selling author, superstar physicist, and cofounder of the World Science Festival Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos) and an ensemble cast led by award-winning actor Paul Rudd (Ant-Man)  perform this dramatic story tracing Albert Einstein's discovery of the  general theory of relativity. Featuring an original score by composer  Jeff Beal (House of Cards, Pollock), Einstein’s electrifying journey toward his greatest achievement is brought vividly to life. The theatrical version of Light Falls was first performed at the World Science Festival in New York City. Full list of narrators includes Graeme Malcolm.