Cities and countries gripped by panic and death, desperate for vaccines yet fearful of inoculation—this mirrors the global experience during Covid-19. Simon Schama illustrates that history has seen similar crises before. Through compelling narratives set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he recounts the devastation of smallpox in London, cholera in Paris, and plague in India. The stories unfold in hospitals, prisons, palaces, and slums, featuring unforgettable characters: a philosopher-playwright suffering from smallpox in a chateau, a doctor making house calls in Halifax, and a woman doctor in India navigating her inoculator-carriage through devastated streets. The narrative also takes us into laboratories where life-saving breakthroughs occur in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. Central to this tale is Waldemar Haffkine, a Jewish student turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, celebrated in England as 'the saviour of mankind' for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India, despite facing rejection from the medical establishment. Creator of the first mass vaccine production line in Mumbai, he ultimately suffers a tragic injustice. This work traverses borders between east and west, rich and poor, politics and science, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humanity and nature. Schama asserts that as we confront modern challenges, "there are no foreigners, only familiars."
Simon Schama Pořadí knih (chronologicky)
Simon Schama je známý svým podmanivým vypravěčským stylem, který oživuje historii a umění. Jeho dílo se vyznačuje schopností zpřístupnit i složitá témata širokému publiku prostřednictvím živých popisů a působivého jazyka. Schama klade důraz na narativ a styl, čímž provokuje tradiční akademické kruhy, které kritizují jeho práci pro její subjektivitu a popularitu. Jeho přístup k historii je často provokativní a snaží se zachytit nejen fakta, ale i atmosféru a kontext doby.







Tvář Británie : příběhy za národními portréty
- 568 stránek
- 20 hodin čtení
Simon Schama, známý popularizátor umění, nás zve na procházku po Národní portrétní galerii v Londýně a zároveň po dějinách Velké Británie. Pohlédneme do tváře řady významných osobností – monarchů, šlechticů, umělců a dalších, kteří ve tváři ostrovního impéria zanechali výrazný otisk. Schama jako skvělý vypravěč podniká výpravy do hloubi dějin, koření je barvitými příběhy, každá kapitola je dobrodružnou cestou do vzdálenější i nedávné historie; najdeme v nich odpovědi na otázky, proč se portréty malují a jaký byl jejich význam ať už z uměleckého nebo třeba i z politického hlediska. Kniha je také pobídkou zamyslet se nad osobnostmi, které většinou známe z učebnic, nad jejich osudy, touhami a nad tím, čím se zapsaly do dějin.
Wordy
- 416 stránek
- 15 hodin čtení
A wide-ranging collection of essays written by the award-winning writer and historian over his forty-year career, chosen by the man himself.
Belonging. The Story of The Jews 1492-1900
- 784 stránek
- 28 hodin čtení
The words that failed were words of hope. But they did not fail at all times and everywhere. These gripping pages teem with words of defiance and optimism, sounds and images of tenacious life and adventurous modernism, music and drama, business and philosophy, poetry and politics.
Rembrandt's Eyes. Rembrandts Augen, englische Ausgabe
- 750 stránek
- 27 hodin čtení
This dazzling, unconventional biography shows us why, more than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt continues to exert such a hold on our imagination. Deeply familiar to us through his enigmatic self-portraits, few facts are known about the Leiden miller's son who tasted brief fame before facing financial ruin (he was even forced to sell his beloved wife Saskia's grave). The true biography of Rembrandt, as Simon Schama demonstrates, is to be discovered in his pictures. Interweaving of seventeenth-century Holland, Schama allows us to see Rembrandt in a completely fresh and original way.
The story of the Jews : finding the words 1000 BCE - 1492 CE
- 512 stránek
- 18 hodin čtení
It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the millennia and the continents âe" 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 âe" as often imagined âe" 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 everyoneâe(tm)s story, too.
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble
- 464 stránek
- 17 hodin čtení
Passionate, provocative, entertaining and informative, Scribble, Scribble, Scribble ranges far and wide: from cookery and family to Barack Obama, from preaching and Shakespeare to Victorian sages, from Charlotte Rampling and Hurricane Katrina to 'The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of The Osbournes'.
The Power of Art
- 448 stránek
- 16 hodin čtení
Traces the extraordinary evolution of eight world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver
This book examines the history of American exceptionalism tht means so much to it's people but has led into calamaties as well as triumphs. With the election of a new president in November 2008, the fate of America, by extension of the world will be hanging in the balance.




