Excerpt
PROLOGUE NO ONE DREW lines at the beginning. There were no maps. No countries. No flags. Just land — raw, breathing land — stretched under sky. Mountains didn’t need names. Rivers didn’t ask who owned them. The world was whole, and no one had chopped it up yet. People moved. They followed herds. They settled near water. They fought, sure — but not over dotted lines. Borders didn’t exist. Then we invented them. Not carefully. Not wisely. Not all at once. We carved the world in pieces — with blood, with fire, with ink on scrolls, with treaties written by men who’d never seen the lands they split. Empires expanded until they cracked. And when they cracked, we filled the gaps with flags....
ALEXANDER
CAESAR
Charlemagne
A Land Divided
Control Freaks
Da Vinci and the Boys