Figuring Out The Past: A History of the World in 3,495 Vital Statistics
Author: Peter Turchin Format: Paperback Number of Pages: 272 What was history's biggest empire? Or the tallest building of the ancient world? What was the average life expectancy in medieval Byzantium? The average wage in Old Kingdom Egypt? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ritual human sacrifice ever? We are used to thinking about history in terms of stories. Yet we understand our own world through data: vast arrays of statistics that reveal the workings of...