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This is the pictorial history of the rise (and fall) of great nations, from the ancients to today. But this is not just Rome and the Incas and British imperialism-though it certainly includes them-but lesser known civilizations that are often relegated to a footnote, or forgotten altogether. The ancient Anasazi Indians of the American Southwest apparently enjoyed an agrarian lifestyle that, after they mysteriously disappeared, would not be realized again on this continent for many generations. The natives of Easter Island sealed their own doom with a kind of communal hysteria that remains unclear. Several cultures put their mark on England's Stonehenge, and peeling the layers of that story is like parsing the experience of a very old tree, ring by ring.