The Book of Firsts: 150 World-Changing People and Events from Caesar Augustus to the Internet - Softcover

D'Epiro, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307388433 ISBN 13: 9780307388438

Publisher: Anchor, 2010

Synopsis

  The Book of Firsts is an entertaining, enlightening, and highly browsable tour of the major innovations of the past twenty centuries and how they shaped our world.

Peter D’Epiro makes this handy overview of human history both fun and thought-provoking with his survey of the major “firsts”—inventions, discoveries, political and military upheavals, artistic and scientific breakthroughs, religious controversies, and catastrophic events—of the last two thousand years. Who was the first to use gunpowder? Invent paper? Sack the city of Rome? Write a sonnet? What was the first university? The first astronomical telescope? The first great novel? The first Impressionist painting? The Book of Firsts explores these questions and many more, from the earliest surviving cookbook (featuring parboiled flamingo) and the origin of chess (sixth-century India) to the first civil service exam (China in 606 AD) and the first tell-all memoir about scandalous royals (Byzantine Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora). In the form of 150 brief, witty, erudite, and information-packed essays, The Book of Firsts is ideal for anyone interested in an enjoyable way to acquire a deeper understanding of history and the fascinating personalities who forged it.

About this title

From the Author

I designed The Book of Firsts as an overview of some of the most significant developments in world history over the past twenty centuries. Beginning with the reign of Caesar Augustus, I devoted either 7 or 8 essays to each of those centuries so as to provide the reader with a flavor--or odor--of the century under examination. The book comprises 150 short essays, most of which can be read within 3-10 minutes. The general reader who reads the book through will have a decent grasp of the main currents of history, especially European and American history, from the year 1 to the days of the Internet. With its detailed table of contents, however, the book is also ideal for skimming.
          The book covers the chief movements of Western and some non-Western history by looking at who or what was the "first" in a certain category. I structured the book in terms of 150 questions and answers, each pair followed by a brief essay that explains the firstness under discussion. Of course, the format is mainly a hook on which to display the main themes of our historical past--its political, military, scientific, and cultural achievements, as well as its various catastrophes, like the Viking invasions, the Black Death, and World War I.
          Century by century, the book builds on itself to set out the main contours of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity, the barbarian invasions and Dark Ages, the rise of Islam, the Viking Era, the Crusades, the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the various literary, artistic, and scientific preoccupations of the past several centuries of our modern era. As such, The Book of Firsts completes the set of three books I have written (the first two with Mary Desmond Pinkowish) on the highlights of what may be called the high culture of the Western world.
          Beginning with What Are the 7 Wonders of the World? and 100 Other Great Cultural Lists (1998) and continuing with Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World (2001), I have tried to sketch out some of the must-know cultural information that used to be part of the mental furniture of every educated person but that has largely fallen by the wayside. I have thus provided what I see as a 1500-page partial remedy in the form of three books packed with relevant cultural information.

About the Author

Peter D’Epiro received a BA and MA from Queens College and a PhD in English from Yale University. He has taught English at the secondary and college levels and worked as an editor and writer for thirty years. He has also written (with Mary Desmond Pinkowish) Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World and What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? and 100 Other Great Cultural Lists—Fully Explicated, which has appeared in British, German, Russian, Lithuanian, and Korean editions. He has recently completed an English verse translation of Dante’s Inferno, and his other publications include a book and several articles on Ezra Pound’s Cantos and a book of translations of African-American poetry into Italian. He has a grown son, Dante, and lives with his wife, Nancy Walsh, in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0307388433
• ISBN 13: 9780307388438
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640