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• Fully illustrated with drawings, photographs, and maps
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• Written in clear and concise language,

Table of Contents

• Kings, Emperors and Politicians
• Religious Leaders
• Humanitarians
• Thinkers and Philosophers
• Scientists
• Inventors
• Explorers and Pioneers
• Musicians and Composers
• Writers
• Painters, Sculptors and Architects
• Stage, Screen and Photography

Kings, Emperors and Politicians
Menes (ca. 3100-3000 BC) - united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom.
Hammurabi (c.1792-1750 BC) - first king of the Babylonian Empire.
Cyrus the Great (ca.576-530 BC) - founder of the Persian Empire.
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) - king of Macedon; he conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks, never losing a battle.
Asoka (304-232 BC) - emperor of India who converted to and spread Buddhism.
Qin Shi Huang (260-210 BC) - Chinese Emperor; unified China, initiated construction of the Great Wall of China.
Hannibal (247-183 BC) Carthaginian military commander and politician.
Julius Caesar (c.100-44 BC) - Roman military and political leader; key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
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Religious Leaders
Zoroaster (c.1200 BC) - ancient Iranian prophet and the founder of Zoroastrianism.
Buddha (c.563-c.483 BC) - founder of Buddhism.
Jesus Christ (c.6 BC-c.30 AD) - founder of Christianity.
St. Paul (b. c. 10-d. c. 67 AD) - proselytizer of Christianity.
Muhammad (c.570-632 AD) - Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) - a church reformer, founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism.
John Calvin (1509-1564) - Protestant theologian, a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology.

Humanitarians
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) - political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. In India, he is recognized as the Father of the Nation.
Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986) - a Japanese diplomat who helped thousands of Jews leave the Soviet Union while serving as the consul of the Empire of Japan to Lithuania.
Raoul Wallenberg (1912-c.1947) - worked at great personal risk to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them protective passports from the Swedish embassy.
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Thinkers and Philosophers
Lao Zi [Lao Tzu] (c.600 BC) - founder of Taoism.
Confucius (551-479 BC) - founder of Confucianism.
Socrates (469-399 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher who is credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.
Plato (c.427-347 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician; together with Socrates and Aristotle laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) - philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) - philosopher, musician, poet, and romantic comedic playwright; widely known for his treatises on realist political theory (The Prince).
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Scientists
Euclid (c.325-c.265 BC) - mathematician; Euclidian geometry.
Archimedes (c.287-212 BC) - ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of physics and engineering.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) - astronomer who formulated the first modern heliocentric theory of the solar system.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) - physicist, astronomer, astrologer, and philosopher; improvements to the telescope, astronomical observations, and effective support for heliocentric theory of the solar system.
René Descartes [Renatus Cartesius] (1596-1650) - "Founder of Modern Philosophy" and "Father of Modern Mathematics"; the Cartesian coordinate system is named after him; described dualism of machine-like body and a nonmaterial mind; argued that only humans have minds.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) - mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, best known for his laws of planetary motion.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion.
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Inventors
Archimedes (c.287-212 BC) - ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of physics and engineering.
Cai Lun (c.50-121 AD) - inventor of paper.
Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468) - inventor movable type printing in Europe; His major work is the Gutenberg Bible.
James Watt (1736-1819) - inventor of the steam engine.
Samuel Morse (1791-1872) - co-inventor (with Alfred Vail) of the Morse Code.
Nikolaus Otto (1832-1891) - inventor of the internal-combustion engine.
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) - inventor of dynamite.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) - inventor of the telephone.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) - inventor and businessman; phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other inventions.
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Explorers and Pioneers
Marco Polo (c.1254-1324) - one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) - discoverer of the Americas.
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) - Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer. Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe. In 1507, a world map was produced which named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo.
Vasco da Gama (c.1469-1524) Portuguese explorer, the first person to sail directly from Europe to India.