History

As persecution, war, and deportation savaged their communities, Jews tried to flee Nazi Europe through both legal and clandestine routes. In this riveting tale of Jewish refugees during and after...

Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's...

When Columbus first returned to Spain from the Caribbean, he dazzled King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with exotic parrots, tropical flowers, and bits of gold. Inspired by the promise of...

In The Sphinx Nicholas Wapshott explains the profound and protracted difficulties Franklin Roosevelt had to overcome before he could commit American forces to the Second World War. FDR was obliged...

Jakarta tweets more than any other city on earth, but 80 million Indonesians live without electricity and many of its communities still share in ritual sacrifices. Declaring independence in 1945,...

When Hitler's armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind's greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of...

This is a book unlike any other. Rather than offering simply a detailed retelling of the Titanic sinking on her maiden voyage, John Maxtone-Graham devotes his considerable knowledge and impeccable...

Fifty generations ago the cultural empire of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. In six hundred years, the Celts had produced some...

The gruesome disease typhus, transmitted by body lice, afflicts the desperate: refugees, soldiers and ghettoised peoples. The Nazis, who equated the louse with "parasitic, subhuman" Jews, so feared the disease...

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in the founding fathers so intense that a reader or television viewer of today might imagine that America was the...

Kingmakers is the story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of...

On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse...

Claudia Roth Pierpont expertly mixes biography and criticism, history and reportage, to bring these portraits to life and to link them in surprising ways. It isn't far from Wharton's brave...

A stunning new book from one of Britain's most highly regarded military historians destined to be the Keegan of his generation One of the greatest military feats during the Second...

'When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake' Plato'Extraordinary how potent cheap music is' Noel CowardIn The People's Songs, Stuart Maconie argues that what we...

The Emperors of Rome charts the rise and fall of the Roman Empire through profiles of the greatest and most notorious of the emperors, from the autocratic Augustus to the...

Michael Fry here applies his uniquely wide-ranging procedures of Scottish historical analysis to the eighteenth century, which gave this small nation its one era of truly global significance. He adds:...

We have all heard about the great generals of military history, and those whose heroic deeds changed the course of war. This is not their book. Instead, this offbeat and...

The story of the Renaissance city and palace of Urbino, and the life of the extraordinary man who created it: Federico da Montefeltro. 'Painstakingly researched and yet unfailingly readable' Ross...

'IF YOU CAN TAKE IT, YOU CAN MAKE IT'Louis Zamperini lived one of the most amazing lives imaginable. As a young boy he was a troublemaker but his will to...

Social agitation is as essential a part of public life today as it has ever been. In Eric Hobsbawm's masterful study, Primitive Rebels, he shines a light on the origins...

'The cruelty and magnificence of Restoration London provides endless fascination . . . there's much to delight in this volume' The Times'Don Jordan's history captures the shifts [Charles II] engineered...

Paralysis. Stuttering. The 'shakes'. Inability to stand or walk. Temporary blindness or deafness.When strange symptoms like these began appearing in men at Casualty Clearing Stations in 1915, a debate began...

In this fascinating and enlightening collection of essays, one of the most important historians of our time reflects on the ways our understanding of Nazi Germany have been transformed in...

In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he...

A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940: seemingly minor twists of fate on...

COROMANDEL. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India.This is the India...

This work should rank among the classics of war in our time, both as a historical document and as an eye-witness testament to human savagery. An epic study of the...

By now everyone knows the basic facts of China's rise to pre-eminence over the past three decades. But how did this erstwhile sleeping giant finally manage to arrive at its...

Born almost a hundred years ago in Vienna - the cultural heart of a bourgeois Mitteleurope - Eric Hobsbawm, who was to become one of the most brilliant and original...

The Battle of Culloden has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the...

Shortly after completing The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi committed suicide. The manner of his death was sudden, violent and unpremeditated, and there are some who argue that he...

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England of Jane Austen's lifetime. It was a troubled period, with disturbing changes in industry and agriculture and a constant dread of...

When Charles I was executed, his son Charles II made it his role to search out retribution, producing the biggest manhunt Britain had ever seen, one that would span Europe...

London, 15 September 1940. The air battle over Britain on that day saw two of the most advanced fighter planes, the British Supermarine Spitfire and the German Messerschmitt Bf 109,...

The archetype of the stern, silent Englishman dedicated to his duty, the Duke of Wellington had all the subtlety and variety of genius. WELLINGTON uncovers the sensitive child of Irish...

The bloodbath at Waterloo ended a war that had engulfed the world for over twenty years. It also finished the career of the charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. It ensured the final...

Sea Wolves is the story of the crews who bravely manned British submarines in the Second World War. This small band of highly trained and highly skilled individuals fought in...

When she disappeared in 1937 over a shark-infested sea, Amelia Earhart had lived up to her wish - internationally famous, a daring and pioneering aviator, and ambassador extraordinary for the...

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships. Drawn from all over Britain...

In 1789 the world stood at the threshold of the modern age. While the French Revolution and the election of George Washington seemed to herald a new global order, Britain...

This book investigates the major changes in world history and world economy during the past five hundred years and explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping...