Each week recent purchases are placed on the new book displays inside the library, and eBooks are made immediately available to use. You can view and subscribe to the list via New Library Books list online. For instructions on how to borrow an eBook by downloading it; check out our eBook LibGuide. Some eBooks require logging in with your JCU username and password; additional software will need to be installed to download books to a digital bookshelf. Most eBooks can be read online without downloading extra software.An eBook title of interest is:
The fifth beginning: What six million years of human history can tell us about our future by Robert L. Kelly.
A summary states:
"I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow." This inscription in Tutankhamun's tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it "globalization," but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism's global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It's the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity's great potential.
Comments