Publisher's Synopsis
This newly revised and updated edition of Jon E. Lewis's snapshot view of history from 2700 BC to 2000 AD offers an outstanding collection of eyewitness accounts to the events that most memorably affected the lives of the nations and people who enjoyed, survived, suffered, or implemented them. The selections from such sources as memoirs, diaries, letters, and journals not only document first-hand the events they recount, they also lend a sense of immediacy to these historical moments for the modern reader. In vivid detail these pages survey the realms of social and political history (President Clinton's impeachment trial), art (Raffaello's attempt to prevent Michelangelo from completing his painting in the Sistine Chapel), war (from the sacking of Babylon by Sennacherib to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait), exploration (the discovery of America -- and tobacco), sports (the 1966 World Cup), science (Sir Isaac Newton on his laws of gravity), disaster (Pliny's account of the astonishing eruption of Vesuvius), and celebration (Charlotte Bronte on the wondrous opening of the Crystal Palace in 1851 and the ancient wonders of Tutankhamen's tomb unearthed by archeologists in 1923).
