The Handy History Answer Book (From the Stone Age to the Digital Age) - 9781578596805

Climate change. Conspiracy hoaxes. Civil unrest. Regime change. Altered national borders. The news is coming fast and furious; the world is ever changing and a knowledge of history is more important than ever. An understanding of history gives us insights into the hows, whats, and whys of modern society and life. The Handy History Answer Book provides abundant information about many of the most frightful events of the past 5,000 years, including wars, disasters, epidemics, and so on. But it also supplies a context for the time with a wealth of information on invention, philosophy, science, politics, culture, sports, business, law, media, and religion. It surveys significant people, times, and events worldwide, with a special focus on U.S. history from its origins to the present.

Some say that history is too big a subject to squeeze itself into a finite series of questions and answers neatly arranged by subject, trimmed, and bound into a book of manageable size, but the wild success of the first three editions suggests otherwise. From the Stone Age to Sports, from the Trojan War to the war in Afghanistan, from the Gutenberg Bible to social media, The Handy History Answer Book provides a feast of facts and compelling stories of the revolutionary ideas, acts, and inventions that have changed the world.

Clear, concise, and straightforward, this informative primer is a resource for brushing up on the events, terms, and history-makers many of us remember from school but can’t completely recall. Fully revised and updated for the first time in over eight years, this new edition of The Handy History Answer Book is a convenient place to go to look up those devilish questions that have a way of cropping up in everyday conversation and reading. This friendly resource answers more than 1,600 of the most frequently asked, most interesting, and unusual how-what-why history questions, including …