This image is the cover for the book Ideas

Ideas

The acclaimed author of The German Genius presents a sweeping intellectual historian of human civilization: “[An] extraordinary book” (Sunday Telegraph, UK).

In Ideas, Peter Watson has undertaken a hugely ambitious study, charting the evolution of human history from deep antiquity to the present day through the lens of intellectual development. Here is the grand story of human thought from the invention of writing, mathematics, science, and philosophy to the rise of such concepts as the law, sacrifice, democracy, and the soul. Impassioned and erudite, Ideas offers an illuminated path to a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.

“This is a grand book . . . The history of ideas deserves treatment on this scale.” —Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Evening Standard (London)

Peter Watson

<p>Peter Watson has been a senioreditor at the London <em>Sunday Times</em>, a New York correspondentof the <em>London Times</em>, a columnist for theLondon <em>Observer</em>, and a contributor to the <em>New YorkTimes</em>. He has published three exposés on the world ofart and antiquities, and is the author of several booksof cultural and intellectual history. From 1997 to 2007he was a research associate at the McDonald Institutefor Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.He lives in London.</p>

HarperCollins