Лучшие книги Саймона Майкла Шамы

«У великого искусства ужасные манеры!» С первых строк этого драматичного повествования становится очевидно: знаменитый историк и популяризатор науки Саймон Шама не намерен примерять на себя роль авторитетного музейного гида, неспешно ведущего от шедевра к шедевру доверчивую группу жаждущих прикоснуться к прекрасному. А потому не надейтесь на легкую прогулку по…

Непревзойденный мастер популярного исторического повествования Саймон Шама с блеском профессионального романиста и скрупулезностью профессионального историка создает динамичный и объемный образ Нидерландов XVII века, – тех времен, когда уроженец Лейдена Рембрандт ван Рейн, триумфально продемонстрировав, каких высот способна достичь голландская живопись, на многие…

Inside these pages lies the bloody epic of liberty, the British Iliad.
The second volume of Simon Schama's A History of Britain brings the histories of Britain's civil wars - full of blighted idealism, shocking carnage, and unexpected outcomes - startlingly to life. These conflicts were fought unsparingly between the nations of the islands - Ireland, England, and Scotland - and between parliament and the crown. Shattering the illusion of a "united kingdom," they cost hundreds of thousands of lives: a greater proportion of the population than died in the First World War.
When religious passion gave way to the equally consuming passion for profits, it became possible for the pieces of Britain to come together as the spectacularly successful business enterprise of "Britannia Incorporated." And in a few generations that business state expanded in a dizzying process that transformed what had been an obscure, off-shore footnote to Europe's great powers into the main event - the most powerful empire in the world.
Yet somehow, it was the "wrong empire." The British considered it a bastion of liberty, yet it was based on military force and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans. In America, the emptiness of British claims to protect "freedom" was thrown back into the teeth of colonial governors and redcoat soldiers, while the likes of Sam Adams and George Washington inherited the mantle of Cromwell.
Simon Schama grippingly evokes the horror of the battle, famine, and plague; the flames of burning cities; the pathos of broken families, with fathers and sons forced to choose opposing sides. But he also captures the intimacies of palace and parliament and the seductions of profit and pleasure. Geniuses like John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and Benjamin Franklin stalk vividly through his pages, but so do Scottish clansmen, women pamphleteers, and literate, eloquent African slaves like Olaudah Equiano.

Simon Schama, one the most celebrated historians of our day, brings the history of Britain to dramatic life in this landmark work. Schama reanimates historical figures and events, and draws them skillfully into a powerful and profound narrative that combines passion and scholarship with a superb sense of storytelling.

At the Edge of the World, the first volume of Schama’s monumental work, moves from the birth of civilization to the Norman Conquest. It spans the religious wars and turbulence of the Middle Ages, the outbreak of the Black Plague, the reign of Edward I, the intrigues of the Tudors, and the clash between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Simon Schama's magisterial new book encompasses over 1,500 years of Britain's history, from the first Roman invasions of the early seventeenth century, and the extraordinary reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Schama, the author of the highly acclaimed Citizens and The Embarrassment of Riches, is one of the most popular and celebrated historians of our day, and in this magnificent work he brings history to dramatic life with a wealth of stories and vivid, colorful detail, reanimating familiar figures and events and drawing them skillfully into a powerful and compelling narrative.

Schama's perspective moves from the birth of civilization to the Norman Conquest; through the religious wars and turbulence of the Middle Ages to the sovereignties of Henry II, Richard I and King John; through the outbreak of the Black Death, which destroyed nearly half of Europe's population, through the reign of Edward I and the growth of national identity in Wales and Scotland, to the intricate conflicts of the Tudors and the clash between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.

Driven by the drama of the stories themselves but exploring at the same time a network of interconnected themes—the formation of a nation state, the cyclical nature of power, the struggles between the oppressors and the oppressed—this is a superbly readable and illuminating account of a great nation, and its extraordinary history.

Simon Schama is the author of The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Landscape and Memory and, most recently, Rembrandt's Eyes. He is currently Old Dominion Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. The second installment of his epic history of Britain is due to be published in April 2001.

"История евреев: Обретение слов" - первая книга, открывающая многотомное издание, посвященное еврейской истории. Широта научных интересов автора, британского историка Саймона Шамы, его эрудированность, ироничный стиль и великолепный живой язык позволяют воспринимать созданный им фундаментальный труд как роман-эпос о вечном сопротивлении разрушению, об…

Вторая книга многотомного издания "История евреев" - "Осознание дома" - охватывает период с 1492 года до конца XIX века. Саймон Шама продолжает свой великолепный роман-эпос о бесконечном выживании народа в обществах, не допускавших полной интеграции евреев, об обмане и ненависти, о разрушительных погромах и изгнаниях, о вечно разбитых надеждах и о том, что где бы евреи ни оказывались и как бы много ни работали, все легко могло быть потеряно в одночасье. Именно начиная с Альгамбрского эдикта вектор еврейской истории был направлен на поиск места, где бы еврейский народ, осознающий себя единой нацией, мог свободно жить и исповедовать свою религию, не подвергаясь притеснениям. Оставаясь верным себе, автор показывает коллективную историю через судьбы отдельных людей, как знаменитых (будь то философ Спиноза, или композитор Мейербер, или Великий Магид, или узник Чертова острова Дрейфус), так и мало известных большой истории. Проходя сквозь революции Нового времени, сквозь изменения политической карты мира, сквозь экономическую и социальную модернизацию, подводя свое повествование вплотную к обострению антисемитизма и к формированию сионистского движения, Саймон Шама останавливается на пороге XX века, насыщенного сколь ужасными, столь и значительными событиями в жизни еврейского народа.
Издание адресовано широкому кругу читателей, интересующихся мировой историей и культурой.

Simon Schama’s great project continues and the Jewish story is woven into the fabric of humanity. Their search for a home where a distinctive religion and culture could be nourished without being marginalized suddenly takes on startling resonance in our own epoch of homelessness, wanderings, persecutions, and anxious arrivals. Volume 2 of The Story of the Jews…

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.
Within these pages, 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.

Timothy West reads the second volume of Simon Schama’s compelling chronicle of the British Isles. The British wars began on the morning of 23 July 1637, heralding two hundred years of battles waged within and away from our isles. Most would be driven by religious or political conviction, as Republicans and Royalists, Catholics and Protestants, Tories and Whigs, and colonialists and natives vied for supremacy. Of those battles not fought on home territory, a great number took place across Europe, America, India and also at sea. Schama’s examination of this turbulent period reveals how the British people eventually united in imperial enterprise, forming what he calls ‘Britannia Incorporated’. The story of that change evokes the memory of such enduringly influential people as Oliver Cromwell, as well as lesser known but equally extraordinary individuals. A story of revolution and reaction, progress and catastrophe, this is a vivid account of two centuries which changed Britain.