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Drawing on diverse sources, this book offers a view of ancient Rome as seen by its people that reveals the lasting legacy of its ordinary men and women.The Romans loom large in the imagination, credited with roads, aqueducts, politics, plumbing, and empire--yet these familiar achievements tell only part of the story. The Romans: A People's History turns away from generals and emperors to focus instead on the millions of ordinary men and women whose voices rarely made it into history. Drawing on inscriptions, literature, household objects, mosaics, and myth, it reveals how plebian lives shaped the culture that still surrounds us: from food and labor to beliefs, entertainment, violence, and political resistance. Not shying away from contentious subjects--misogyny, slavery, racism, and the enjoyment of brutal spectacle--Paul Chrystal offers a rich, human-centered account of Roman civilization seen from the ground up, suggesting that what ordinary Romans endured and achieved still echoes i

While most English-language histories of Taiwan focus on its geopolitical role, this history centres on the people of Taiwan themselves and explores how they have formed a unique polity, telling the story of the Indigenous Taiwanese, the Hoklo and Hakka who came from China before the twentieth century, Japanese colonialism and the Chinese who arrived after 1945. Historian Evan N. Dawley describes how successive waves of immigration changed Taiwan and how these diverse groups of Indigenous tribes and settlers interacted economically and culturally, creating new Taiwanese identities in the process.Over the last century Taiwan has developed from an authoritarian state to one of the world’s most vibrant democracies and advanced economies. It is a successful independent society, albeit one whose existence remains under a shadow.

Spanning centuries and continents, a beautifully illustrated history of humanity's enduring enthrallment with a seemingly banal substance: petrified tree sap, or amber. Amber: From Antiquity to Eternity is a history of human engagement with amber across three millennia. The book vividly describes our conceptions, stories, and political and scholarly disputes about amber, as well as issues of national and personal identity, religion, art, literature, music, and science. Rachel King rewrites amber's history for the twenty-first century, tackling thorny ethical and moral questions regarding humanity's relationship with amber in the past, as well our connection with it today. With the Earth facing unprecedented challenges, amber--the natural time capsule, and preserver of key information about the planet's evolutional history--promises to offer invaluable insights into what comes next.