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12+ Obras 1,192 Miembros 28 Reseñas

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Incluye el nombre: Justin Pollard

Créditos de la imagen: Justin Pollard

Obras de Justin Pollard

Obras relacionadas

Great Commanders of the Medieval World, 454–1582 (2011) — Contribuidor — 31 copias
The Complete Uncle (2013) — Contribuidor, algunas ediciones31 copias

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History is written by the winners, but for every war or battle that is won, and for every monarch that makes it to the top of the pile, there are hundreds of alternative snippets of history that never see the light of day.

Pollard in this book aims to set some of the record straight in this book. He has uncovered many little stories, tales and anecdotes that fill in the gaps in the broad sweep and big picture views of most history books. He has called them secret, but they are more unknown, and cover all ages of history from the middle ages to events in the second world war. And being one of the QI elves, he has written this with wit and humour too, making it a pleasure to read.

A great book for those that want to peer in the cracks of British history.
… (más)
 
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PDCRead | otra reseña | Apr 6, 2020 |
A medium sized coffee table type book that covers several wonders of the ancient world in 4-6 pages of text and colour photographs/illustrations each. The text provides a brief description and history of each wonder. This book is quite nice and also includes ancient wonders I haven't come across before.
 
Denunciada
ElentarriLT | Mar 24, 2020 |
For some reason I just couldn’t get caught up in the narrative like I usually do, even though this was an interesting read.

I had heard snippets about the Ptolemaic era before but didn’t have much context to put it in. Now I do, and among other things I learned that the Ptolemaic family dynasty was one of the more ruthlessly dysfunctional ones around, despite its interest in fostering philosophy and the advancement of knowledge. It was also amazing to read about how the ancient Alexandrians had correctly deduced the shape of the earth and extensively mapped almost all of the known world at the time. While their original maps have been lost, their books left such detailed descriptions and instructions for creating them that Renaissance scholars were able to reconstruct them. They also invented the water clock, an analog computer (the Antikythera mechanism is worth Googling), and the forerunner of the steam engine. The scholar Aristarchus had even discovered heliocentrism, and Copernicus’s handwritten manuscripts contain references to Aristarchus’s work, although for unknown reasons he later removed these from the printed version of his text.

I also really enjoyed learning more about the Library of Alexandria. At its peak the library held 750,000 scrolls. I am going to use “books” and “scrolls” interchangeably here, not least because this book does the same. To my mind, a library by definition has books and I’m not sure what I’d call a collection of scrolls.

I actually have a substantially lower opinion of the legendary library than when I started, because it turns out that many of its books were actually stolen from other libraries in the ancient world, and a book-stealing library – especially in the days before the printing press – is no library for me. For example, books that a library in Athens had sent to be copied were never returned and neither were any of the copies, meaning that when the library was destroyed all of material the Athens library had sent was lost forever. It gave me some insight into the reasoning behind creating the famous “chained libraries” of the Middle Ages, some of which still exist. Not only that, but all the books coming in to Alexandria were confiscated for copying; the originals went into the library while the copies were given to the original owners. I am glad that today’s libraries have substantially different acquisitions policies. In fact, the Library of Congress has been known to repatriate valuable antique books upon learning that the sellers had fraudulently acquired them.

No one knows for sure how the Library of Alexandria, both its main collection and a smaller “daughter” collection most likely kept at the Serapeum temple, were lost. But it is likely that most or even all of the main collection was destroyed during the Alexandrine War, when Julius Caesar burned the Egyptian fleet in the Great Harbor and the wind swept the flames toward the city. After this event, there were no more explicit references to the main library, suggesting that it may have been destroyed altogether. But even if it wasn’t, the loss would have been a disaster; Livy stated that as many as four hundred thousand scrolls were lost in the fire. However, the smaller collection is known to have survived the Alexandrine War. The Serapeum temple is known to have survived into the fourth century and would have been the logical home of the books, since it was designed to appeal to Egyptians and the ancient Egyptian practice had been to combine temples with libraries and colleges. However, there is no definitive evidence that the books were still actually there. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, who died in 402, claimed in his Weights and Measures that the daughter library was still there, but his work is the only source that claims this, and all other descriptions of the destruction of the temple make no reference to the books. Even the virulently anti-Christian Eunapius of Antioch, who might be expected to blame Christians for any possible atrocity, does not mention the destruction of the library. And so, “the fate of one of Alexandria’s great libraries again slips through our fingers.” (Page 264).

Finally, some food for thought from the introduction: “Other libraries have held more books; indeed, today the Library of Congress in Washington and the British Library in London hold between them nearly every book printed in the last two hundred years and many more besides. But they are not complete, not least because most of the knowledge of the first thousand years of Western civilization is missing. These were the books that formed the library of Alexandria, and only a handful have been seen since that library’s tragic destruction. All that remains is perhaps 1 percent of the works that were once lodged there, the chance survivors of that shipwreck of human achievement.” But this also made me start wondering in what sense any library is “complete,” because in some ways there are two different kinds of books – those already written and those waiting to be written. And we need them all.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
Jennifer708 | 12 reseñas más. | Mar 21, 2020 |
For some reason I just couldn’t get caught up in the narrative like I usually do, even though this was an interesting read.

I had heard snippets about the Ptolemaic era before but didn’t have much context to put it in. Now I do, and among other things I learned that the Ptolemaic family dynasty was one of the more ruthlessly dysfunctional ones around, despite its interest in fostering philosophy and the advancement of knowledge. It was also amazing to read about how the ancient Alexandrians had correctly deduced the shape of the earth and extensively mapped almost all of the known world at the time. While their original maps have been lost, their books left such detailed descriptions and instructions for creating them that Renaissance scholars were able to reconstruct them. They also invented the water clock, an analog computer (the Antikythera mechanism is worth Googling), and the forerunner of the steam engine. The scholar Aristarchus had even discovered heliocentrism, and Copernicus’s handwritten manuscripts contain references to Aristarchus’s work, although for unknown reasons he later removed these from the printed version of his text.

I also really enjoyed learning more about the Library of Alexandria. At its peak the library held 750,000 scrolls. I am going to use “books” and “scrolls” interchangeably here, not least because this book does the same. To my mind, a library by definition has books and I’m not sure what I’d call a collection of scrolls.

I actually have a substantially lower opinion of the legendary library than when I started, because it turns out that many of its books were actually stolen from other libraries in the ancient world, and a book-stealing library – especially in the days before the printing press – is no library for me. For example, books that a library in Athens had sent to be copied were never returned and neither were any of the copies, meaning that when the library was destroyed all of material the Athens library had sent was lost forever. It gave me some insight into the reasoning behind creating the famous “chained libraries” of the Middle Ages, some of which still exist. Not only that, but all the books coming in to Alexandria were confiscated for copying; the originals went into the library while the copies were given to the original owners. I am glad that today’s libraries have substantially different acquisitions policies. In fact, the Library of Congress has been known to repatriate valuable antique books upon learning that the sellers had fraudulently acquired them.

No one knows for sure how the Library of Alexandria, both its main collection and a smaller “daughter” collection most likely kept at the Serapeum temple, were lost. But it is likely that most or even all of the main collection was destroyed during the Alexandrine War, when Julius Caesar burned the Egyptian fleet in the Great Harbor and the wind swept the flames toward the city. After this event, there were no more explicit references to the main library, suggesting that it may have been destroyed altogether. But even if it wasn’t, the loss would have been a disaster; Livy stated that as many as four hundred thousand scrolls were lost in the fire. However, the smaller collection is known to have survived the Alexandrine War. The Serapeum temple is known to have survived into the fourth century and would have been the logical home of the books, since it was designed to appeal to Egyptians and the ancient Egyptian practice had been to combine temples with libraries and colleges. However, there is no definitive evidence that the books were still actually there. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, who died in 402, claimed in his Weights and Measures that the daughter library was still there, but his work is the only source that claims this, and all other descriptions of the destruction of the temple make no reference to the books. Even the virulently anti-Christian Eunapius of Antioch, who might be expected to blame Christians for any possible atrocity, does not mention the destruction of the library. And so, “the fate of one of Alexandria’s great libraries again slips through our fingers.” (Page 264).

Finally, some food for thought from the introduction: “Other libraries have held more books; indeed, today the Library of Congress in Washington and the British Library in London hold between them nearly every book printed in the last two hundred years and many more besides. But they are not complete, not least because most of the knowledge of the first thousand years of Western civilization is missing. These were the books that formed the library of Alexandria, and only a handful have been seen since that library’s tragic destruction. All that remains is perhaps 1 percent of the works that were once lodged there, the chance survivors of that shipwreck of human achievement.” But this also made me start wondering in what sense any library is “complete,” because in some ways there are two different kinds of books – those already written and those waiting to be written. And we need them all.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
Jennifer708 | 12 reseñas más. | Mar 21, 2020 |

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