Nonfiction books
Robert Silverberg has written a large amount of non-fiction, most of it aimed at younger readers. This is an attempt to list it all. Many of these books are available at public libraries, if not in book stores.
Also, check out Rodney Walters' comprehensive nonfiction bibliography.
Illustrated by Alvin Smith.
From the dust jacket:
He has been called the world's first idealist, the first temporal ruler ever to lead his people toward the worship of a single God. His name was Akhnaten, the strange Pharaoh whose influence on history went far beyond Egypt and far beyond his era. Here Robert Silverberg brings to life one of the founders of the modern world.
When Akhnaten came to the throne more than 3000 years ago, Egypt dominated the world. But behind this panoply of power was a cowering citizenry plagued by gods and demons conjured up by a sinister priestcraft. Akhnaten swept aside old gods and demons. Then, creating his own priesthood, he proclaimed a new religion--a religion of a single God. This visionary Pharaoh, more interested in philosophy than power, was unlike any other Egyptian ruler. When he introduced his concept of monotheism, Akhnaten was at an historic crossroads, for, at that point in time and place, the Hebrews were in Egypt. the author explores the relationship between Akhnaten's religion and the Hebrews' religion, and in the light of modern archaeological findings, he compares the spirituality of Akhnaten and Moses.
Akhnaten: The Rebel Pharaoh is more than the story of a man and his personal imprint of history. It is also the story of the grandeur that was Akhnaten's Egypt, a land where men, released from the bondage of a fear-laden religion, produced a magnificent civilization. In the new environment Akhnaten fostered, minds bloomed and artists flourished. The artists immortalized Akhnaten's queen, Nefertiti, whose serene beauty still lives today in works of Egyptian art.
This book deals with the same Egyptian Pharaoh as his juvenile novel The Mask of Akhenaten. I don't know definitively whether researching the biography spawned the novel or vice versa. This book was published first of the two.
About the Author
Robert Silverberg spent two years researching this book in Israel and the United States where he interviewed many of the participants. A professional writer since 1955, Mr. Silverberg is the author of a number of books on scientific and historical subjects.
With an introduction by Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld.
From the cover blurb: POMPEII! TROY! BABYLON! The fantastic story of how men lived at the dawn of civilization! POMPEII--proud city of the Caesars preserved in its last agonized moment of life by a sudden torrent of volcanic ash. TROY--the golden treasures of a great mythical city discovered hidden beneath a hilly Turkish town. BABYLON--the great tower of Babel rising over the desert like a modern skyscraper. ANGKOR--its vine-enshrouded towers brooding over the steaming jungles of Cambodia. KNOSSOS--glittering, maze-like palace, home of the Minotaur, where Cretan aristocracy lived in glittering splendor. CHICHEN ITZA--site of the great Mayan pyramid and the Sacred Well of death. Here are Robert Silverberg's fascinating stories of six great civilizations that lived and died as long as 7000 years ago and the men who helped to rediscover them. |
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This is apparently an abridged version of Mound Builders of Ancient America.
The mounds of the Mississippi Valley and southeastern United States are major monuments of the prehistory of North America. Nearly every important waterway in the Midwest is rimmed by clusters of mounds, ten thousand of them in the valley of the Ohio alone. Some are of colossal size, like Cahokia Mound in Illinois, a hundred feet high and covering sixteen acres of land; others are mere blisters rising from the earth.
Who built the mounds?
To the first settlers who pushed beyond the Alleghenies, these earthworks were a major mystery. The semi-nomadic Indians appeared to have no knowledge of their origin--nor did these "savages"seem to the nineteenth century white man capable of the organized effort and geometric complexities demonstrated by the mounds. Inexorably, the myth arose of a "vanished race" and a "lost civilization."
By 1800 the "mystery of the mounds" had become a favorite topic of scientific study--and for popular literature, fanciful theorizing, and outright PT Barnum charlatanism. Treatises, serious and otherwise, were written to prove that the Mound Builders were immigrants from Mexico, refugees from Atlantis, wandering Danes or Malays, or descendents of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Mr Silverberg recounts with zest and many quotations from original sources this chapter of American romanticism.
The Mound Builder legend was finally laid to rest by the early work of the Smithsonian Institution, whose excavations and studies of mound sites laid the foundation of accurate knowledge of North American prehistory. this book chronicles the establishment of archaeology as a science in America as well as the lore of the myth. It offers a comprehensive survey of the present state of knowledge of the various Indian groups who produced the mounds: the rich and creative Hopewell and Adena peoples with their far-ranging trading "empire" based in the Ohio Valley and the various cultures of the upper and lower Mississippi who produced the flat-topped Temple Mounds and a remarkable and mysterious assortment of "death cult" objects of art.
This is one of Silverberg's two most scholarly adult books, and is one of the major references on this topic.
Illustrations by Robert Thornton. Photographs by Barbara Silverberg
Despite the pseudonym, inside it says "Copyright 1962 by Robert Silverberg".
This is Silverberg's other scholarly work, a fascinating account of the various legends surrounding the existence (or not) of a great Christian monarch in the East. Or maybe in Africa. Well, somewhere--stories conflicted and tall tales abounded in the Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Foreword: Pontifications
One: Science Fiction: some General Thoughts
Two: About Science and Society
Three: The Profession of Writing
Four: Colleagues
Five: Today's World
Six: A Few Personal Items
From the Foreword: "What I have brought together here is most of my columns from Galileo [1978-80], Amazing Stories [1981-94], and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine [1992-present], along with occasional pieces written for other publications and some essays originally intended as introductions to new editions of my own books."
Apparently a shorter version of The Golden Dream.
I can't definitively say if this is a Silverberg opus. At least one book dealer has it listed as such.
Maps and drawings by Thomas R. Funderburk.
To the rock of Darius, 1966
To the western shore; growth of the United States, 1971
Silverberg's first non-fiction book. With illustrations by Norman Kenyon.
Wonders of ancient Chinese science, 1969
Last updated October 21, 2002
Disclaimer: Any quoted material or scanned image contained in these pages is copyrighted, either by Mr Silverberg or others. It is not my intention to infringe on copyrights, only to present information to the curious. The parts I wrote myself are presented free of restriction, though please acknowledge the source if distributing them.