History

Shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History PrizeA Telegraph and Der Spiegel Book of the YearSueddeutsche Zeitung's Number One Most Important Political Book of 2023Die Zeit, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk, taz Number One,...

When we think of archaeology, most of us think first of its many spectacular finds: the legendary city of Troy, Tutankhamun's golden tomb, the three-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, the mile-high...

As we move toward trials challenging the legitimacy of the Bush administration's use of detentions in Guantanamo and elsewhere, Roosevelt's response to the captured Germans - military tribunals, a secret...

This is a biography of Napoleon III who ruled over 18 years of glittering success in France known as the Second Empire. Modern Paris was created out of its medieval...

Labour's second term is drawing to a close. What have they really achieved in the last four years? Did Iraq overshadow all? Did public services improve after all? Were the...

This is a probing of the realities, as distinct from the theory, of politics in the UK. It concentrates on two main issues. One is the role of Parliament with...

At the heart of the Regency period - nine years from 1811 to 1820 - lies the mismatch between the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince Regent, later George...

A combination of straightforward autobiography - his family background, education and career - and an account of the election campaign of 1989 when Yeltsin stood as a candidate for the...

In his revealing biography of British politician and diplomat Malcolm MacDonald, Clyde Sanger gives a full account of MacDonald's central role in the decolonization of the British Empire. The son...

A delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.Simon Garfield reveals the secret histories...

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been locked in conflict with the United States and Europe. Personified in the West by a series of bogeymen from Ayatollah Khomeini to Mahmoud...

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory - rapid, spectacular victory -...

In Republic vs. Autocracy, Andrzej Kaminski analyzes a pivotal period in the relationship between two Eastern European powers. By this time Poland-Lithuania had lost control of East-Bank Ukraine and Kiev...

The book centres around the Sun King and his relationship with numerous and fascinating women. Naturally dividing into five parts it will concentrate on the King's mother, Anne of Austria,...

Intrigue, double-dealing and conspiracy in the Eternal City. 'A fascinating narrative of the intermingling of secular and religious power' New Statesman 'A highly enjoyable and thrilling read... Hollingsworth has peeled...

Imagine a world without Principia Mathematica, Rights of Man, the Bible, Shakespeare, or the Mahabharata.Books that Changed History features 75 of the world's most momentous titles - from The Art...

As France emerged from the Franco-Prussian War she embarked on a period of active colonialism, acquiring territories in South-East Asia and Africa. By the turn of the century much of...

The mighty struggle for the Somme sector of the Western Front in the second half of 1916 has come to be remembered for the dreadful toll of casualties inflicted on...

The short but savage Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 pitched well-equipped but complacent British soldiers into combat with the Zulu, one of history's finest fighting forces. The clashes between these two...

This is a concise and authoritative account of the course of the First World War, with analysis of decisive encounters and landmark engagements. It offers a full description of every...

Intelligence specialist Leigh Neville identifies, describes and illustrates the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the British, American and other Coalition forces committed to the 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan since...

The restoration of the Meiji Imperial dynasty in 1868, after 250 years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, decisively opened Japan to the outside world and the monarchy embraced modernization, including the...

The lives and loves of the great condottieriFederigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, was the archetypal 'Renaissance man': a brilliant soldier, scholar and ally of the pope, he spent much...

In April 1478, a plot to murder the two heads of the powerful Medici family dramatically miscarried. The younger of the two brothers was killed, but Lorenzo the Magnificent, the...

The Siege of Vienna in 1683 was one of the turning points in European history. It was the last serious threat to Western Christendom and so great was its impact...

Drawing on a vast range of sources, from manga comics to MacArthur's report to Congress, this monumental new work by America's foremost historian of modern Japan traces the impact of...

During the 20th century, Russia, Ukraine and other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more violent and avoidable deaths than anywhere else on earth. Two World Wars and one...

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a...

In the African kingdom of Kasch the king should be sacrificed when the stars come into a particular alignment. One day a stranger arrives who tells such good yarns the...