An essential book for the 21st-century citizen who seeks a lively guided tour of the ancient Greek Olympics What was it like to attend the Olympics in 388 B.C.? Would the experience resemble Olympic festivals as we celebrate them today? This remarkable book transports us back to the heyday of the city-state and classical Greek civilization. It invites us to enter this distant, alien, but still familiar culture and discover what the Greeks did and didn't do during five thrilling days in August 2,400 years ago.
In the Olympic Stadium there were no stands, no shade—and no women allowed. Visitors sat on a grassy bank in the searing heat of midsummer to watch naked athletes compete in footraces, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races, and three combat sports—wrestling, boxing, and pankration, everyone's favorite competition, with virtually no rules and considerable blood and pain. This colorfully illustrated volume offers a complete tour of the Olympic site exactly as athletes and spectators found it. The book evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowded encampment; introduces the various attendees (from champions and charlatans to aristocrats and prostitutes); and explains the numerous exotic religious rituals. Uniquely detailed and precise, this guide offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to travel in time, back to the excitement of ancient Olympia.

A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient Olympics

History

Faulkner, Neil

Ancient Civilizations

Yale University Press

A wealth of new research and thinking on Lawrence, the Arab Revolt, and World War One in the Middle East, providing essential background to today’s violent conflicts Rarely is a book published that revises our understanding of an entire world region and the history that has defined it. This groundbreaking volume makes just such a contribution. Neil Faulkner draws on ten years of field research to offer the first truly multidisciplinary history of the conflicts that raged in Sinai, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria during the First World War. In Lawrence of Arabia’s War, the author rewrites the history of T. E. Lawrence’s legendary military campaigns in the context of the Arab Revolt. He explores the intersections among the declining Ottoman Empire, the Bedouin tribes, nascent Arab nationalism, and Western imperial ambition. The book provides a new analysis of Ottoman resilience in the face of modern industrialized warfare, and it assesses the relative weight of conventional operations in Palestine and irregular warfare in Syria. Faulkner thus reassesses the historic roots of today’s divided, fractious, war-torn Middle East.

Lawrence of Arabia's War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

A panoramic, provocative account of the clash between British imperialism and Arab jihadism in Africa between 1870 and 1920 &nbsp; "An epic account of the British Empire's activities in Africa and the Middle East. . . . An important, indeed tremendous, contribution."--John Newsinger, author of The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire &nbsp; The Ottoman Sultan called for a "Great Jihad" against the Entente powers at the start of the First World War. He was building on half a century of conflict between British colonialism and the people of the Middle East and North Africa. Resistance to Western violence increasingly took the form of radical Islamic insurgency. &nbsp; Ranging from the forests of Central Africa to the deserts of Egypt, Sudan, and Somaliland, Neil Faulkner explores a fatal collision between two forms of oppression, one rooted in the ancient slave trade, the other in modern "coolie" capitalism. He reveals the complex interactions between anti-slavery humanitarianism, British hostility to embryonic Arab nationalism, "war on terror" moral panics, and Islamist revolt. Far from being an enduring remnant of the medieval past, or an essential expression of Muslim identity, Faulkner argues that "Holy War" was a reactionary response to the violence of modern imperialism.

Empire and Jihad: The Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920

Africa

Rome: Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC – AD 476

The Roman Empire is widely admired as a model of civilisation. In this compelling new study Neil Faulkner argues that in fact, it was nothing more than a ruthless system of robbery and violence. War was used to enrich the state, the imperial ruling classes and favoured client groups. In the process millions of people were killed or enslaved. 
Within the empire the landowning elite creamed off the wealth of the countryside to pay taxes to the state and fund the towns and villas where they lived. The masses of people – slaves, serfs and poor peasants – were victims of a grand exploitation that made the empire possible. This system, riddled with tension and latent conflict, contained the seeds of its own eventual collapse.

Routledge

A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals (Counterfire)

This magisterial analysis of human history - from "Lucy," the first hominid, to the Great Recession of 2008 - combines the insights of earlier generations of Marxist historians with radical new ideas about the historical process.Reading history against the grain, Neil Faulkner reveals that what happened in the past was not predetermined. Choices were frequent and numerous. Different outcomes - liberation or barbarism - were often possible. Rejecting the top-down approach of conventional history, Faulkner contends that it is the mass action of ordinary people that drives great events.At the beginning of the 21st century - with economic disaster, war, climate catastrophe and deep class divisions - humans face perhaps the greatest crisis in the long history of our species. The lesson of A Marxist History of the World is that, since we created our past, we can also create a better future.

Americas

Pluto Press

This magisterial analysis of human history - from "Lucy," the first hominid, to the Great Recession of 2008 - combines the insights of earlier generations of Marxist historians with radical new ideas about the historical process.Reading history against the grain, Neil Faulkner reveals that what happened in the past was not predetermined. Choices were frequent and numerous. Different outcomes - liberation or barbarism - were often possible. Rejecting the top-down approach of conventional history, Faulkner contends that it is the mass action of ordinary people that drives great events.At the beginning of the 21st century - with economic disaster, war, climate catastrophe and deep class divisions - humans face perhaps the greatest crisis in the long history of our species. The lesson of A Marxist History of the World is that, since we created our past, we can also create a better future.

World

A Radical History of the World

History is a weapon. The powerful have their version of events, the people have another. And if we understand how the past was forged, we arm ourselves to change the future. This is a history of struggle, revolution and social change: of hominids, hunters and herders; of emperors and slaves; of patriarchs and women; of rich and poor; of dictators and revolutionaries. From the ancient empires of Persia and Rome to the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, and the 2008 Crash, this is a history of greed and violence, but also of solidarity and resistance. Many times in the past, a different society became an absolute necessity. Humans have always struggled to create a better life. This history proves that we, the many, have the power to change the world.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

From the hunter-gatherers two million years ago to the ancient empires of Persia and China, and from the Russian Revolution to modern imperialism, humans have always struggled to create a better society than what came before. All over the world at numerous points in the past, a different way of life has become an absolute necessity, over and over again. This is a history of the humans in these struggles—the hominid and the hunter, the emperor and the slave, the dictator and the revolutionary. Reading against the grain of mainstream histories, Neil Faulkner reveals that what happened in the past has never been predetermined. From antiquity to feudalism, and from fascism to our precarious political present, choices have always been numerous and complex, and the possible outcomes have ranged broadly between liberation and barbarism. Rejecting the top-down approach of conventional history, Faulkner contends that it is the mass action of ordinary people that drives the transformative events of our many histories. This is a history of power, abuse, and greed, but also one of liberation, progress, and solidarity. In our fraught political present—as we face the loss of civil liberties and environmental protections, the rise of ethnonationalism, and the looming threat of nuclear war—we need the perspective of these histories now more than ever. The lesson of A Radical History of the World is that, if we created our past, we can also create a better future.

A People's History of the Russian Revolution (Left Book Club)

The Russian Revolution may be the most misunderstood and misrepresented event in modern history, its history told in a mix of legends and anecdotes. In A People's History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner sets out to debunk the myths and pry fact from fiction, putting at the heart of the story the Russian people who are the true heroes of this tumultuous tale. In this fast-paced introduction, Faulkner tells the powerful narrative of how millions of people came together in a mass movement, organized democratic assemblies, mobilized for militant action, and overturned a vast regime of landlords, profiteers, and warmongers. Faulkner rejects caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as authoritarian conspirators or the progenitors of Stalinist dictatorship, and forcefully argues that the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and creativity—and that it was crushed by bloody counter-revolution and replaced with a form of bureaucratic state-capitalism. Grounded by powerful first-hand testimony, this history marks the centenary of the Revolution by restoring the democratic essence of the revolution, offering a perfect primer for the modern reader.

Europe

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Faulkner, Neil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Faulkner, Neil

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Faulkner, Neil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient Olympics

Lawrence of Arabia's War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI

Lawrence of Arabia's War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI

Empire and Jihad: The Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920

Rome: Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC – AD 476

A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals (Counterfire)

A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals (Counterfire)

A Radical History of the World

A Radical History of the World

A People's History of the Russian Revolution (Left Book Club)