TIME 100 Ideas that Changed the World: History's Greatest Breakthroughs, Inventions, and Theories Hardcover – May 17, 2011

This is a good read for when you have a few minutes. Was recommended by an academic coach for writing in order to examine short, well-written pieces of writing.

Got as a birthday gift for my dad and he loved it :)

Great ideas, very little information. Great ideas deserve great backup. There's plenty of space for the editors to have included more FACTS about these ideas, the environment they were hatched in, the people who had them, how they were received in the world, the impact they had, how the impact evolved. Facts that are sadly missing. Too much fluff.

Really great book! Lots of information, lots to learn. Great illustration too, I love the pictures inside! This is kind of a mini encyclopedia.

Great

Book has arrived. Thank you!!!!

Great service from Amazon.Great book.

Books like these are a combination of Cliffs Notes and parlor game, reviewing concepts you studied in high school and college and prompting the intriguing question of which ones you would have included on or excluded from the list. There are several such pictorial guides from Time-Life (100 People Who Changed the World, History's Greatest Events: 100 Turning Points That Changed the World, etc), each of which is colorfully illustrated and clearly, concisely written. This volume focuses on the essential elements of intellectual history: comprehensive principles that went into the founding of our civilization and that continue to underpin our understanding of the world.The book is divided into five chronological sections: "The Ancient World," "The Middle Ages," "The Renaissance," "The Age of Enlightenment," and "Modern Times." Each section is filled with concise summaries of fundamental ideas that span the gamut of disciplines: religion, philosophy, esthetics, politics, mathematics, astronomy, physics, history, economics, biology, and many more. Basic ideas like the alphabet, democracy, infinity, and free will are here, along with more modern ones like the scientific method, equality, the separation of church and state, evolution, relativity, the Big Bang, fascism, existentialism, atheism, and extraterrestrial life.But there are extremely practical principles as well: the breakthroughs of gunpowder, moveable type, electricity, photography, flight, assembly lines, television, computers, and the Internet, among others. Many ideas are identified with famous figures like Hammurabi, the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Aristote, Jesus, Gutenberg, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, Lenin, and so on.You may wonder why the concept of geometry is presented, but not simple machines like the wheel or the plow, or why Augustine's "The City of God" is here, but not the city itself or the agriculture that made urban settlement possible. The answer is that intellectual history is generally limited to ideas originating after the invention of writing, while the latter concepts are traceable to prehistory, the period of time more than 5000 years ago.If you're interested in a scholarly tome that addresses this subject in much greater depth, I recommend the 850-page "Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud" (2006) by Peter Watson. Even more in-depth at 3600 pages in six volumes is the "New Dictionary of the History of Ideas" (2004), which unfortunately retails for more than $1000. Fortunately, an entire five-volume reference, simply titled "Dictionary of the History of Ideas" (1974), is freely available online from the University of Virginia Library. Google it.While academic critics may lambaste the predominantly Western selection of concepts as well as the "mile-wide, inch-deep" approach to history, "100 Ideas That Changed the World" is nevertheless useful and enjoyable as an introduction. These are vital doctrines, theories, and ideals that are essential to contemporary thought and to any educated person. It should activate interest in further reading and additional research into particular sciences, philosophies, cultures, eras, events, and individuals.A softcover edition of this book is also available for a lower price.

A Great reference book

世界を変える１００の考えを自分で書き出そうと思っても、そう簡単ではない。なるほどね、と思うものがいくつもあった。大学生の息子の宿題にも役立ったし、自分の教養にもなった。この TIMEシリーズはどれもなかなかいい。