A grand sweep of history by the late Fernand Braudel one of the twentieth century s most influential historians Memory and the Mediterranean chronicles the Mediterranean s immeasurably rich past during the foundational period from prehistory to classical antiquity, illuminating nothing less than the bedrock of our civilization and the very origins of Western culture.
Essential for historians, yet written explicitly for the general reader, this magnificent account of the ebb and flow of cultures shaped by the Mediterranean takes us from the great sea s geologic beginnings...

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

The subject of The Wheels of Commerce is the development of mechanisms of exchange--shops, markets, trade networks, and banking--in the pre-industrial stages of capitalism.

Volume III investigates what Braudel terms "world-economies"the economic dominance of a particular city at different periods of history, from Venice to Amsterdam, London, New York."