History Books 96 results

Christopher Clark

As told by one of our greatest historians, the story of the scandal that took down two Lutheran preachers in the heart of nineteenth-century Prussia -- a chamber piece of cultish esotericism, pseudoscience, and political resistance that conjures up Europe at the end of the age of reason and presages our current age of misinformation. In 1835, Johannes Ebel and Georg Heinrich Di...

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Dan Hicks

'An extraordinary intervention. If you want to understand the stakes and the limitations of contemporary conflict over culture and colonial history this bold, provocative book is an indispensable resource' Paul Gilroy, founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at UCL 'Hicks' must-read book describes how it was possible for a human sku...

Jean Menzies

Was Ovid a surprising champion of women's sexual pleasure? Or did he just want them to fake it? Where did the British Museum curators hide the most pornographic of frescoes? And what exactly was the phallic wooden object excavated in 90's Northumberland? In "Aphrodisia," Dr Jean Menzies dives into the hidden history of women's sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. The classical...

Ian Buruma

An astonishing account of the human capacity for survival amid a great city's descent into utter annihilation. ...

Bruno Carvalho

A kaleidoscopic and original new history of urbanization—from Lisbon to New York, Paris to Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires to LagosFor the past three centuries, urban dwellers and planners have imagined future cities that would be radically different from those of the past. Planners pursued progress, whether focused on flying vehicles above, sewage systems below, or daily life...

Dan Wang

America used to pride itself on ambition. Today, it looks stuck. Meanwhile, China has been busy building the future. Over the past six years, technology analyst Dan Wang lived through China's astonishing, messy progress and the dissolution of its relationship to the West. In Breakneck, Wang offers a new framework for understanding China - which helps us to see global geopoliti...

Antony Beevor

'Simply the ultimate Second World War history'- SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, DAILY TELEGRAPH A CONFLICT LIKE NO OTHER, it has come to define the very idea of war itself. Great power rivalry prepared the ground, yet so did bitter ethnic disputes following the collapse of four empires, as did the ideological clash between Fascism and Communism. More than any other, the Second World Wa...

Tim Bouverie

A Sunday Times bestselling landmark history of the alliance that won the war and made the peace from the author of Appeasing Hitler 'An astonishing achievement. Compellingly told, immensely wide-ranging and utterly fascinating'JAMES HOLLAND 'The best book I have ever read about the politics of the Second World War' TIM SHIPMAN After the fall of France in June 1940, only Brit...

Daniel Swift

How Shakespeare became Shakespeare: a riveting tale of London's first playhouse and the people--actors, writers, builders, investors--who built the Theatre. Between 1576 and 1598, a playhouse called the Theatre stood in the northeast suburbs of London, until it was secretly torn down and its timbers used to build the much more famous Globe. Dreamed up and run by a former actor ...

Andrew Fitzmaurice

A dramatic intellectual biography of Victorian jurist Travers Twiss, who provided the legal justification for the creation of the brutal Congo Free StateEminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (1809-1897) was a model establishment figure in Victorian Britain, and a close collaborator of Prince Metternich, the architect of the Co...

Ben Macintyre

"On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which poli...

David Lee

In the Third Reich, the SS ran the Gestapo, the police and the concentration camps where millions of people were killed. However Nazi Germany still had laws and a legal system which outlawed murder and other criminal acts and SS Investigating Judge and Police Official SS, Major Konrad Morgen, used these laws to investigate and bring individual members of the SS to justice for t...

Ben Macintyre

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 'Engrossing as any thriller' Daily Telegraph 'Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining' John le Carré 'This is the most amazing book, full of fascinating and hair-raising true life adventures . . . It would be impossible to recommend it too highly' Mail on Sunday _______ One December night in 1942, a Naz...

Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria first warned of the threat of \"illiberal democracy\" two decades ago. Now comes Age of Revolutions- Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present. A decade in the making, the book is based on deep research and conversations with world leaders from Emmanuel Macron to Lee Kuan Yew. In it Zakaria sets our era of populist chaos into the sweep of history. Age of Re...

Jack Carr / James M. Scott

The first in a new in-depth nonfiction series examining the devastating terrorist attacks that changed the course of history from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott, beginning with the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. 1983: the United States Marine Corps experiences its greatest single-day loss of life since the Bat...

Ben Macintyre

In a forbidding Gothic castle on a hilltop in the heart of Nazi Germany, an unlikely band of British officers spent the Second World War plotting daring escapes from their German captors. Or so the story of Colditz has gone, unchallenged for 70 years. But that tale contains only part of the truth. The astonishing inside story, revealed for the first time in this instant bestse...

Linda Kinstler

A TABLET AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR Shortlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize 'A tremendous feat of storytelling, propelled by numerous twists and revelations, yet anchored by a deep moral seriousness . . . Enthralling' Guardian Across the world the last Nazi trials are winding their way through the courts. Nearly a century on from the Holocaust, survivors are ...

Henry Kamen

A new edition of a seminal work--one that explores crucial changes within Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century The early modern period was one of profound change in Europe. It was witness to the development of science, religious reformation, and the birth of the nation state. As Europeans explored the world--looking to Asia and the Americas for new peoples and l...

Rick Atkinson

Winner of the George Washington PrizeWinner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American HistoryWinner of the Excellence in American History Book AwardWinner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book AwardFrom the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American RevolutionRick Atkinson, author of the P...

James M Scott

The definitive history of one of the most brutal campaigns of the war in the Pacific.Before World War II, Manila was a slice of America in Asia, populated with elegant neoclassical buildings, spacious parks, and home to thousands of U.S. servicemen and business executives who enjoyed the relaxed pace of the tropics. The outbreak of the war, however, brought an end to the good l...

David Birmingham

This concise, illustrated history of Portugal offers an introduction to the people and culture of the country, its empire, and its search for economic modernisation, political stability and international partnership. It remains the standard single-volume work on Portugal, studying the effects of the vast wealth mined from Portuguese Brazil, the growth of the wine trade, and the...

Mark Molesky

Winner of the Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book AwardA Los Angeles Times Book Prize FinalistThe captivating and definitive account of the Great Lisbon Earthquake--the most consequential natural disaster of modern times.On All Saints' Day 1755, tremors from an earthquake measuring approximately 9.0 or perhaps higher on the magnitude scale swept furiously toward Lisbon, then o...

Derek Robinson

From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane's cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe's seasoned pilo...

Roger Crowley

'A rare gift . . . The story he has to tell may be a thrilling one but not every historian could tell it so thrillingly.' Financial Times'Magnificently rip-roaring history . . . Bursting with colour and excitement.' Dominic Sandbrook As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigato...

Ying-Ying Chang

A devastatingly powerful book about the loss to madness not only of a daughter, a wife and a mother, but of a promising young historian and author. You must read this. -Recommended by Jeff, City Lights BooksIris Chang's best-selling book The Rape of Nanking forever changed the way we view the Second World War in Asia. It all began with a photo of a river choked with the bodies ...

Ed Moloney

TERRORISM, FREEDOM FIGHTERS, ARMED STRUGGLE. A sensational book that will drag the truth about the war in Northern Ireland further into the light than ever before. In a truly ground-breaking piece of historical evidence-gathering initiated by Boston College, two former paramilitary leaders - one republican, one loyalist - speak with unprecedented frankness about their role in s...

Elizabeth Horodowich

In this colourful new history of Venice, Elizabeth Horodowich, one of the leading experts on Venice, tells the story of the place from its ancient origins, and its early days as a multicultural trading city where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together at the crossroads between East and West. She explores the often overlooked role of Venice, alongside Florence and Rome, as ...

Tim Pat Coogan

An account of the events, personalities and repercussions of the Irish rebellionThe Easter Rising began at 12 noon, 24 April, 1916 and lasted for six short but bloody days, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians, the destruction of many parts of Dublin, and the true beginning of Irish independence.The 1916 Rising was born out of the Conservative and Unionist parties' ill...

Justin Marozzi

A powerful account of the life of Tamerlane the Great (1336-1405), the last master nomadic power, one of history's most extreme tyrants, and the subject of Marlowe's famous play. Marozzi travelled in the footsteps of the great Mogul Emperor of Samarkland to write this wonderful combination of history and travelogue. The name of the last great warlord conjures up images of mys...