All Things Under The Sun: How Modern Ideas Are Really Ancient

Whether it is the financial crisis, Middle East, travel delays or death and taxes, the issues that make the headlines today are also the things people worried about 2,000 and more years ago. Learning how the people of the past dealt with them can prepare us to face the issues affecting us today.

"The past is a virtual laboratory in which we can study how cause and effect plays out in different circumstances", says author Lindsay Powell. Combining a researcher's skill at finding unexpected connections in everyday events and a historian's knowledge of source material, in clear eyed and often witty look at modern times through the longer perspective of ancient history and reveals that, as the old adage goes, 'all things under the Sun, there's nothing new'. "Human societies have faced many of the same problems before," says Lindsay, "and if we're smart, we'll learn from the past and pick the solutions that worked - and avoid those that didn't."