The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings (Hist Atlas)

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Resource.......2007-03-06

This handy sized book (10" x 6.5" x .5ish") makes a great general resource of information related to the Vikings and their period of history. As one who finds history easier to comprehend when plentiful maps are handy, I find the historical atlas a wonderful class of book in general. The Penguin historical atlases are smaller than many I have, which makes them a bit more convenient to use. The maps in this atlas are easy to understand and do help shed light on the activities and movements of the Vikings.

I did find the approach to the text in this book a bit redundant, but this seems to have been an intentional choice on the part of the author, who presents a block of information prior to the maps in a given section of the book, and then re-covers this material in the text accompanying each map at essentially the same level of detail. I'm not sure I would have done it this way, but, as I use the atlas more, perhaps this format will grow on me.

All in all a very useful and well produced resource. Many thanks to all those involved in researching and producing it.

Best Resource for Beginning Scandophiles.......2007-02-09

This atlas is one of the best possible collections of our knowledge about early Scandinavia. Although the term "Viking" is in the title, hopefully by reading this book you will learn that there was a whole lot more to primitive, expansionist Scandia. The book also does a great job of talking about all the players in Norden, rather than just the traditional trio. I'm a Scandinavian Studies student in college and this book has been an exceptional resource for multiple papers.

An excellent summary of Viking history.......2007-01-18

As an amateur reasearcher and a keen fan of Viking history, I consider this book to be one of the best summaries of the Viking era. The text is well edited, to-the-point, yet manages to contain all important historical details. The illustrations and maps complement the text's material with further graphic information very well, causing the book to be one of the most interesting reads on Vikings I have ever come across. The writing not only deals with major military events of the Viking era, but discloses details on everyday life, rural and urban settlements, trade activites and much more of medieval Scandinavia.

To readers who are interested in overall Viking history but simply cannot decide which book to start with, this work is an ideal choice.

Very Informative.......2007-01-14

I found this book to be excellent for my requirements - it provided information clearly and was not overwhelming in detail. The maps are excellent. I recommend this book to everyone interested in Viking history. It makes an excellent reference book to have in your library.

A visual history of Vikings through maps.......2005-08-28

Vikings, which stands for "raiders", were strong shipbuilders and sailors, and their fame became soon known to their victims around Europe. Their brutality was recorded in chronicles from their victims (literate clergymen), and in part their ill fame is probably the result of bad press of that time.
History needs maps. An historical atlas is very useful if a reader wants to keep track of all Viking raids and pillages around the coasts of northern Europe, but also as far today Russia and Central Asia. Vikings gave the name to Russia, being Rus the name Finns gave to Swedish Vikings in that area, which means "oarsmen". So this historical atlas provides plenty of information through maps and entertaining captions that help to understand how far-reaching Viking influence was. However, this atlas, as a previous reviewer has noted, is too centered on Viking presence in British islands and Ireland.
At the beginning of the X century, Charles III of France gave Normandy (the land of Norse) to the Vikings, who in turn offered their allegiance. These settled Vikings became known as Normans, who took part to new adventures: William, the Duke of Normandy, led the conquest of England, Robert the Guiscard seized Sicily from Muslims in the Mediterranean, and took part in the Crusades. This by-product of the Viking saga is almost completely left out.
All in all, this atlas provides a visual history of Vikings, that is appropriate and easy to read for students and the general reader. Recommended to all who share an interest in Medieval history of Northern Europe.

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World (Penguin Historical Atlas)

Average customer rating:

Good Study Aid

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World (Penguin Historical Atlas)
Andrew Jotischky , and Caroline Hull
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books

Atlases | Atlases & Maps | Reference | Subjects | Books

Historical | Atlases & Maps | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0141014490

Book Description

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World traces the development of peoples, cultures, and faiths between the coming of the barbarian invasions in the fourth century and the first voyages to the New World in the sixteenth. This colorful atlas illustrates the sweeping changes from the fall of the Roman Empire to the birth of Islam, the rise of Christianity, and the role of Judaism across Europe. Packed with vivid maps and photographs, this atlas is a perfect guide to Europe and its neighbors in the Middle Ages.

Customer Reviews:

Good Study Aid.......2006-11-10

I have been reading through the Story of Civilization by Will Durant and though these volumes do have maps, they are not always easy to read and are somewhat limited in scope.
I can say that my understanding of history and geography has been greatly helped and enriched by these atlas' AND the scholarship present in the summations of geography, people, culture and chronologically specific movements in medieval times. An excellent resource for the price.
Note: These atlas' are much more rewarding when read along side a history book like Will Durant, Toynbee, Herodotus etc. as opposed to all on their own.

The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History: Revised Edition (Hist Atlas)

Average customer rating:

Excellent way to get an overview of Europe in the Middle Ages
Great
Fascinating and wonderful book!
Nice for students of Medieval Europe
Poor map quality and duller history!

The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History: Revised Edition (Hist Atlas)
Colin McEvedy
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0140512497

Customer Reviews:

Excellent way to get an overview of Europe in the Middle Ages.......2007-09-21

This new edition of a classic overview of Medieval Europe is well worth the small price. It makes clear that the Middle Ages was a period of tremendous change and flux. Empires rose and fell almost overnight. Recommended for anyone who wants to more fully appreciate this period. (The maps and the text are all much better than in the previous edition, which was excellent.)

Great.......2006-08-25

McEvedy's shamlessly Eurocentric view is a breath of fresh air in a world polluted by the smog of neo-anthropological cultural correctness. If you want to learn about the who, what, when, and where [emphasis on the last two] of Europe/the Near East during the Middle Ages, then this is the book for you.

The maps are highly detailed; the text is informative and easy to read. You won't get lost in a labyrinth of meaningless jibberish. Buy this book--you will not be sorry. I promise.

Fascinating and wonderful book!.......2005-09-20

I read the old edition, from the library, and it is completely one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. It was recommended as background reading for a history of Western Christianity course I took. This book is perhaps not as furnished with specific details as some would prefer, but as a comprehensive overview of the Mediterranean world in the middle ages it is extremely successful. It is true that the book focuses only on Europe and the world specifically surrounding it (North Africa, the near East, Scandinavia and some of Russia) but I think it is also arguable that we consider "the medieval world" to be specifically that area in light of the social and cultural history associated with the Middle Ages. Using the same map over again is extremely useful and makes the book easy to understand (producing an enjoyable flip-book effect, as another reviewer said). The text is wonderful: though dense, it is extremely easy to understand and McEvedy brings an enjoyable personal flavor to his narration. The absence of most significant landmarks on the map is sometimes inconvenient; I found myself turning to the full map in the index quite frequently. However, I feel that not cluttering the maps with excess print is probably worth the inconvenience. Throughout the book, specific people are identified by an elaborate shading-and-bordering system that, once one has adjusted to it, makes reading the maps very easy. If you are looking for an informative and fantastically compelling broad history of the middle ages, this is a most desirable book.

Nice for students of Medieval Europe.......2004-05-26

Good book with simple maps, black, white and green and not poor texts. Detailed. But unfortunately, mostly focuses on European history. I' d call it Atlas of Medieval Europe.

Poor map quality and duller history!.......2002-12-15

This book uses ONE single map on every page to document the movement of various people over time. However, it does not designate major landmarks. It tells of tribes crossing the Danube and the Volga but these rivers are never labeled. It refers to the Tigris and Euphrates but you need another map to tell you where they are. When major landmarks are not identified it is hard to understand how this can be called an Atlas. The history is disjointed and poorly written. The only reason to buy this book is that you don't have a match with which to burn your money.

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World

Average customer rating:

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World
et al Andrew Jotischky
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJ4NI2

Average customer rating:

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World (Penguin Historical Atlas)
Andrew Jotischky
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N79HZE

Book Description

A GRIPPING STORY OF IMPERIAL AMBITION, SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE, AND THE KAISER'S OWN JIHAD.

An acclaimed historian tells, for the first time, the full story of the conspiracy between the Germans and the Turks to unleash a Muslim holy war against the British in India and the Russians in the Caucasus. Drawing on recently opened intelligence files and rare personal accounts, Peter Hopkirk
skillfully reconstructs the Kaiser's bold plan and describes the exploits of the secret agents on both sides-disguised variously as archaeologists, traders, and circus performers-as they sought to foment or foil the uprising and determine the outcome of World War I.

Customer Reviews:

Another Hopkirk Treasure.......2007-09-05

You can count on Peter Hopkirk to deliver fascinating accounts of the lands that served as the arena for The Great Game, and this is no exception. In this well-done volume, Hopkirk tells the tales of intrigue launched at the outset of WWI, mostly aimed at the destruction of the British Empire. While the world was focused on the carnage in Europe, a lesser-known war was raging in Central Asia, where the players were the dying Ottoman Empire, the newly emergent Bolsheviks plus Persian and Caucasian forces and, of course, the British. Hopkirk records these events with a journalists eye toward telling a compelling story. So much of today's world was influenced by the events Hopkirk describes. This is a valuable book which rounds out our knowledge of a most turbulent time.

The fire that nearly engulfed the world.......2006-12-15

Hopkirk delivers a wonderful book in his look at how the British Empire was forced to respond to Germany's attempts to destroy its empire. The book is the most terrifying installment of the series as Hopkirk describes Germany's efforts to raise a holy war in the Middle East. The efforts of the British to stop it are impressive and once again show the triumph and finesse of the British imperial system. This is another fascinating book that looks at how the British empire lasted throughout the turbulent years of world war 1. As always the book is very well written and impressively displayed.

An Okay-to-Good Book.......2006-03-23

THE GREAT GAME was a great book. Suspenseful, interesting, etc.

LIKE HIDDEN FIRE, in comparison, doesn't really come close to comparing to THE GREAT GAME.

LIKE HIDDEN FIRE has its moments where you're flipping pages in anticipation of the next page, but in a book with nearly 500 pages, there aren't enough moments like this and the existing moments don't last long enough.

Can't quite really put my finger on any specific issue. The overall storytelling sort of wanders from one area or time into another one, and you weren't quite sure what the connection was. Other accounts are told, only to seem as if there was really no other point to include it.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a bad book, per se. If you haven't read either book yet, read THE GREAT GAME before this one (aside from the fact that THE GRAT GAME historically precedes LIKE HIDDEN FIRE).

Why they call it World War.......2005-01-15

So many aspects of our present world and the dilemmas that plague us now grew out of the backrooms, the backwoods and the backwaters of the world. Even today, Central Asia is a mystery to most people in the US. "Like Hidden Fire" is a great place to start to learn how complex the world is and why the peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia might have just a little mistrust of the West and its motives.

The story is the down and dirty of the German efforts to unseat the British Empire leading up to and during the First World War. It includes efforts to create a Holy War against the British and champion the Kaiser as a "Defender of the Faith" (the Faith in question being Islam, of course).

The trail takes us from intrigue to counter intrigue through Turkey, Iran and into Central Asia where then, as today, the Westerners are more pawns in the local struggles than vice versa.

This is totally relevent to today both in understanding the local issues as well as how shallow the West is in dealing with the people and culture of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The work is as vast and complex as the region and the people it covers. Set some time aside to read it and don't be surprised if you find yourself exploring the people, places and other works that are cited in the book.

-Mike

Great Game Intrigue in the Middle East during WWI.......2004-07-26

For those of you who are familiar with Hopkirk's other books, this book is yet another well written narrative on an obscure subject.
Hopkirk does a wonderful job of bringing to life key personnel who were involved in Great Game intrigue in the Middle East during WWI. Figures such as Von Hentig, Niedermeyer, Wassmuss, Teague-Jones, Noel, and MacDonnel to name a few, are brought to life and given their rightful spot in the plot-counterplot dramas that unfolded behind the scenes in Mesopotomia, Persia, Afghanistan and Russian/Soviet Central Asia.
I would have liked to see a bit more development on Wassmuss vis-a-vis Mesopotamia, and I think any reader of this would love to see in the future the true life story of Reginald Teague-Jones.
However, the scope of this book is so large, that any further elaboration on any of these subjects would have made the book a multi-volume set.
A great read for anyone who is interested in any of the other theaters of WWI. Excellent bibliography (as usual for Hopkirk)...highly recommended.

Amazon.com

What is it about neuroscience that graces its practitioners with humility? Rodolfo Llinas of the NYU School of Medicine continues this tradition of quietly tackling the deepest issues in I of the Vortex. This exposition on the evolution and development of consciousness is accessible and intriguing enough to interest readers more philosophically than scientifically oriented. Grounded in research, the book posits our awareness as an artifact of the cortico-thalamic binding of perceptions and movements in synchrony; Llinas uses this theory as a launching pad for more far-reaching considerations of selfhood all the more relevant for their correlation with the facts.

Charmingly illustrated with artistic and scientific images cleverly supporting the arguments, the book is a quick if challenging read, and it explains all the scientific basics for those approaching from the humanities. Synthesizing evolution, philosophy, and neuroscience is becoming an increasingly popular endeavor for introspective eggheads, and we should be grateful: the question of consciousness affects us all and touches on every other field, from theology to particle physics. I of the Vortex is a welcome contribution to the theory of mind and essential reading for the introspective. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

In I of the Vortex, Rodolfo Llinas, a founding father of modern brain science, presents an original view of the evolution and nature of mind. According to Llinas, the "mindness state" evolved to allow predictive interactions between mobile creatures and their environment. He illustrates the early evolution of mind through a primitive animal called the "sea squirt." The mobile larval form has a brainlike ganglion that receives sensory information about the surrounding environment. As an adult, the sea squirt attaches itself to a stationary object and then digests most of its own brain. This suggests that the nervous system evolved to allow active movement in animals. To move through the environment safely, a creature must anticipate the outcome of each movement on the basis of incoming sensory data. Thus the capacity to predict is most likely the ultimate brain function. One could even say that Self is the centralization of prediction.

At the heart of Llinas's theory is the concept of oscillation. Many neurons possess electrical activity, manifested as oscillating variations in the minute voltages across the cell membrane. On the crests of these oscillations occur larger electrical events that are the basis for neuron-to-neuron communication. Like cicadas chirping in unison, a group of neurons oscillating in phase can resonate with a distant group of neurons. This simultaneity of neuronal activity is the neurobiological root of cognition. Although the internal state that we call the mind is guided by the senses, it is also generated by the oscillations within the brain. Thus, in a certain sense, one could say that reality is not all "out there," but is a kind of virtual reality.

Customer Reviews:

Thinking as an internalized movement!.......2007-06-24

Jorge Borges wrote, "I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors... Perhaps I would have liked to be my father, who wrote but has the decency of not publishing".
In the book "I of the vortex" Rodolfo Llinas gives another perspective on who am "I" and where "I" comes from, looking into the deep and dark recesses of the brain as a neuroscientist and physician, leaving God out from the game, unlike his maestro John Eccles, a dedicated theist, who wrote that "there is a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution".
The ultimate thesis Llinas nominates is: "thinking is an internalized movement". He makes his point very clearly, based on his extensive knowledge and experience both as a scientist and writer. Perhaps thinking is an internalized movement? Perhaps not! The book "I of the vortex" is the ultimate read for those who ask Questions. An excellent book.

Readable and wide-ranging, but all from just one theoretical perspective.......2006-10-23

What is the "self" in neural terms? Few would be bold enough to claim an answer to that question. Yet in "I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self," Rodolfo Llinas sketches a very compelling picture of how the self, consciousness, and intelligence may arise in the brain.

Essentially, Llinas's argument goes as follows. First, brains are really only found in animals that move (so, obviously, plants do not have brains). In fact, at least one animal - the sea squirt - actually devours its own brain once it no longer needs to move. Although simple movements might be caused by oscillatory pattern generators in the spinal cord, the brain is necessary for more complex, sensory-guided movement. Why should this be so?

The answer Llinas provides is prediction, or in other words, a sensorimotor internal model of the world based on "dt lookahead" functions, interfacing the motor and sensory systems. Synchronized oscillations from the cerebellum (Llinas's area of expertise) carry out the motor-side of this computation, giving rise to the characteristic 8-12 Hz periodicity of the neural signals that command voluntary movements. At a higher frequency (40 Hz), other neuronal oscillations throughout the thalamocortical system serve to bind sensory representations together. And the subjective, cognitive correlate of the intersection of these oscillations is no less than the self: "this temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components of external and internal reality into a single construct is what we call the 'self.'"

But wait, doesn't that mean that all animals have a sense of "self"- even the lowly sea squirt (at least before it eats its brain)? It would seem so. But that's not the end of Llinas's more controversial claims. Llinas also suggests that neural networks explain "very little concerning the actual functioning of the nervous system itself," advocating instead the idea that most of our cognitive abilities are genetically prewired at birth. Along these lines, Llinas endorses Chomsky's idea that genes may to a large extent determine language, and furthermore that language exists in many species besides homo sapiens.

It is here that "I of the Vortex" starts to seem more like a manifesto than a careful scientific analysis. For example, after introducing the basics of neurophysiology and comparative neurology in the first half of the book, Llinas skips the cognitive level of analysis almost altogether and starts extrapolating directly to issues of consciousness, awareness, and selfhood. This bias against direct investigations of cognition (something arguably very important for understanding consciousness) is nowhere more apparent than when he refers to cognitive neuroscience as "neophrenology." But without this important middle-level of analysis, Llinas is mostly shooting from the hip in the second half of the book - and aiming for concepts that are simply too far removed from Llinas's expertise in cellular neurophysiology.

On the whole, Llinas has done an admirable job of outlining one particular view of how neuronal dynamics may give rise to consciousness in an embodied cognition framework. In this sense, "I of the Vortex" makes an excellent companion to other high-level introductions to cognitive neuroscience.

Amazing Neuroscience synthesis!.......2005-08-14

The book presents an amazing Neuroscience synthesis that covers all the aspects: from ions to synergistic systems. It gives a thought-provoking explanation of the origin of the brain through evolution. It also explains the concepts of 'qualias' and 'fixed action patterns' in such an integrative manner and concludes that everything was perfectly made to synergistically create our predictive brains.

read it........2004-09-07

If you are going to read one book about neuroscience, consciousness, or the meaning of life, this should be it. Dr. Llinas has made some unusually innovative and profound assertions about how the self ("soul") might be generated from the mechanical workings of the brain. While the answer to the hard problem of consciousness remains elusive, I can honestly say after having read many books on the subject, that this is as close as it gets.

Very worthwhile.......2002-05-20

The author presents quite a plausible theory of mind, based on his work as a neuroscientist. I suspect Llinas is very much on the right track to illuminating the physical basis of consciousness.

Building chapter-by-chapter simultaneously on the apparent evolutionary development from the simplest neuronal system to the centralized brain, and on the results of brain scans and other experiments, Llinas brings us calmly and reasonably to the resultant human mind of today.

For Llinas, consciousness is the synchronized 40Hz firing of regions of the cortex over time. That is, consciousness is not just a given pattern of firing in 3-space, but is a 4-space relation. That additional dimension of time multiplies enormously the potential number of brain patterns that could occur in an individual. But it also makes the topic that much harder to study.

The writing feels like it has been written by someone who knows alot: there are many points where conceptual connections are not made entirely explicit (because it probably seemed so self-evident to Llinas) and the reader must fill in those gaps. Also, some of his non-neurologic language is quite technical: the description of the "self" as a calculated eigenvector, or the "vortex" which is essentially an attractor (as known in mathematics), that can make Llinas sound like a cold, hard-nosed scientist.

However, Llinas is refreshingly 'human'. For him, it is quite reasonable to assume (as a common consequence of evolution and similarity of brain structure) that many other species have forms of consciousness. Indeed, he devotes an entire chapter to qualia, and contends that qualia exist as essential brain feature, not only for humans but for cats and dogs and most other animals with brains of the same evolutionary genre (and that even in the case of invertebrate (octopus) brains he argues that the burden of proof is on those who would deny qualia).

Customer Reviews:

Informed, well written, fascinating subject matter.......1999-07-15

A text that reads like a novel. It flows, with gripping information and substance on every page. Well presented. I recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in the American environment.

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