Written by the author of "The Embarrassment of Riches" and "Citizens", this book is about man's search for his cultural origins in the landscape which surrounds him, a search which is as old as civilization itself. Forests, rivers, mountains, islands - what meanings have men invested in them, and how have they in turn shaped men's imaginations? For example, in five opening chapters, Schama shows how each of the great European cultures imagined their woodlands in ways which spoke to their collective needs. In Poland, the last great primeval forest in Europe, the woods represented liberty against the oppression of Russia and Germany. In Germany, they represented the shrine of the Teutonic spirit. In England, justice, the "King's Peace" under the greenwood. In France, order. In America, among the glades of the giant redwoods, the oldest living things in the world, the possibility of making a heaven on Earth.

Landscape and Memory

Politics & Social Sciences

SCHAMA,Simon

Social Sciences

Harpercollins Publisher

Patriots and liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813

History

Europe

Collins

Two Rothschilds in the Land of Israel

Alfred.A. Knopf

Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves -- Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom -- escaped from farms, plantations and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.
With powerfully vivid storytelling, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.

Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution

Africa

Ecco/Harpercollins

If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, which side would you want to win? 
When the last British governor of Virginia declared that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the king would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves fled from farms, plantations, and cities to try to reach the British camp. A military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in U.S. history. With powerfully vivid storytelling, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture, shedding light on an extraordinary, little-known chapter in the dark saga of American slavery.

Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution

Americas

Ecco

In this magnificently illustrated cultural history—the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews—Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish experience, tracing it across three millennia, from their beginnings as an ancient tribal people to the opening of the New World in 1492 to the modern day.
It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds.
It spans the millennia and the continents—from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear, from the severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in Muslim Spain.
In The Story of the Jews, the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris, massed gibbets hang over the streets of medieval London, a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world; candles are lit, chants are sung, mules are packed, ships loaded with spice and gems founder at sea.
And a great story unfolds. Not—as often imagined—of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians.
Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC - 1492 AD (Story of the Jews, 1)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The Story of the Jews Volume One: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD (Story of the Jews, 1)

“With eloquence, wit, passion, and irony, The American Future traces the history of an idea: that of our national destiny….A book of beautiful writing, peppered with wisecracks, slashed with rapier thrusts.” —Philadelphia InquirerA De Tocqueville for the 21st century, Simon Schama, NBCC Award winning author of Rough Crossings offers an essential, historical, long view analysis of the American character in The American Future. Shama examines four themes—war, race and faith, immigration, and custodianship of the land—through the prism of the historic 2008 presidential election in a magnificent work that the Wall Street Journal calls a “celebration of American resiliency.” Niall Ferguson says, “I hope Obama will have this book on his bedside table.”

The American Future: A History

Nothing that has happened since the inauguration of Barack Obama has dispelled the sense that the election of 2008 was the kind of moment of truth in American politics and history that seldom comes along. Simon Schama, the acclaimed historian and award-winning critic, followed the campaign, but unlike other accounts, The American Future looks at that contemporary moment through the window of time. In four areas critical to the fate of the American republicwar; the place of religion in politics and culture; immigration; and the tenacious grip of expectations of permanent abundanceSchama looks back to see more clearly into the future. Full of lost insights and spellbinding tales, discovering men and women who have been forgotten in the big record, The American Future showcases Schama's unique gift of storytelling, ensuring these eloquent voices will be heard again as the nation moves forward into an uncertain moment in its history.

Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, who would you want to win?
Tens of thousands gave their answer, voting with their feet for Britain and King George. In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves-Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom -- escaped from farms, plantations, and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.
With powerfully vivid storytelling, often in the voices of the slaves themselves and the white abolitionists who became their emancipators and protectors, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.

Rough Crossings CD: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution

HarperAudio

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

Books by SCHAMA,Simon

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

Landscape and Memory

Patriots and liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813

Two Rothschilds in the Land of Israel

Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution

Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC - 1492 AD (Story of the Jews, 1)

The Story of the Jews Volume One: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD (Story of the Jews, 1)

The American Future: A History

The American Future: A History

Rough Crossings CD: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution