...Also for her perceptive editing of my copy over many decades, especially during the writing of this book. Epigraph Neither to persuade nor i... ...arco Polo. 7. Islam‘s Great Gifts to the West One precept of the Koran states that the human world’s quest for knowledge leads to further knowing... ...glish, and eventually worldwide public-ations. The doorway is right in front of you. All you have to do is open it. ―Knowledge is power. ― —F... ...cessing, the bosses at the Kalamazoo Gazette sat this then city editor in front of a keyboard linked digitally to a cathode ray tube (CRT), a monitor... ...into the huge depression known today as the Black Sea. Driven from their homes by that fearsome flood, survivors dispersed to the four winds. B... ...ain control over regions large enough to grow into the world‘s first city-states. Temples, such as those in Ur, Babylon, and Nineveh, towered over... ...BC), the monarch who sold the cedars to King Solomon (1011–931 BC). Their homeland lay along the coastal regions known today as Israel, Lebanon, Syri... ...icles to the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In 2011 the United States is less than half that age. CHAPTER 6 ―Chinese ships... ...ge of literature and learning in an England that was gradually becoming a united kingdom. It was to England‘s scholars that Charlemagne—the illit...

...ndrous invention. Paper and print nourish China’s awakening, which dazzles Marco Polo. -- 7. Islam‘s Great Gifts to the West-One precept of the Koran states that the human world’s quest for knowledge leads to further knowing of Allah. Islam saves classic wisdom and passes China’s wasp secret to the West. -- 8. Charlemagne and Medieval Europe-The illiterate warrior-king bri...