Secondhand History Books

This title is a journalist's account, much of it as an eye-witness, of South Africa's history from Malan to Mbeki, deftly tracing South Africa's transition from apartheid to a constitutional...

AS FEATURED ON THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE'Entertaining' The Times'Utterly fascinating and illuminating' Sinclair McKay'Fascinating... An astonishing read, with remarkably vivid protagonists' Harald Jahner'Ohler weaves a masterful tapestry of history in...

This is a portrait of an extraordinary man whose life mirrors the story of modern South Africa. Born in 1918, the son of a tribal chief, Mandela was politically active...

'He writes history like nobody else. He thinks like nobody else ... He sees the world as a whole, with its limitless fund of stories' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday TimesWhere have...

A compelling new biography of the legendary mistress of King Louis XV of France with dramatic insights into the life of one of the most enchanting, powerful and feared women...

Britain, as the most powerful of the European victors of World War One, had a unique responsibility to maintain the peace in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. The...

'The fullest picture of this presidency yet' Daily Telegraph'Kantor digs for detail and strikes gold' The TimesWhen Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, he also won a long-running debate...

Moura Budberg: spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century's greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness....

Ten years ago, Angela Kiss arrived in the UK without a word of English. All she brought with her was a small bag, a sense of adventure, a desire to...

'Everyone should spend a couple of hours of their life reading it, to remind themselves that, even in the darkest depth of human misery, the bravest souls still exist.' Sunday...

Andrew Marr's first book tells the distinctive story of Scottish politics -- now updated with a new introductory chapter.'We may be about to see a new country - indeed, two...

Forget everything you think you know about the making of the most powerful man on the planet. President Barack Obama's triumph was not inevitable: it was the end product of...

In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in...

There can be few more mesmerising historical narratives than the story of how the dazzlingly confident and secure monarchy Louis XIV, 'the Sun King', left to his successors in 1715...

Written in 1878, The Jerilderie Letter is Ned Kelly's own account of his family's persecution and the events that led to his becoming one of the most famous outlaws in...

This work is a collection of 50 speeches from every period of British history from the medieval era to the present and a fascinating dip-in history title that will both...

The Cold War was enacted in multiple arenas: military coalitions, espionage, industrial and technological developments, an arms race, many proxy wars - and chess. Those 64 squares may seem an...

'An absorbingly creepy travelogue through the corridors, tunnels and basements of our most famous cultural repository. With Noah Angell as our guide, the British Museum becomes a haunted prison filled...

Hester Salusbury was a child prodigy. Later, as Hester Thrale, her wit, learning and vivacity would attract the greats of the day, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, Boswell, David Garrick and...

The 1735 Witchcraft Act, charging that spirits of the dead had been raised by conjuration, was used for the last time in Portsmouth in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan,...

Looking for coffee table books that do more than look great on your table? Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World, delivers on both counts. Featuring...

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksDuring his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for. In Jane Austen's breezy and entirely biased telling of...

The "war on drugs" in America continues to be fought with old "weapons". Harsh punishments continue to be handed out to offenders, but these measures fail to control the most...

This atlas draws together crucial social and economic data on England, Scotland and Wales between 1780 and 1914, and gives a clear guide to the industrial development of Great Britain...

Consuming History examines how history works in contemporary popular culture. Analysing a wide range of cultural entities from computer games to daytime television, it investigates the ways in which society...

The remarkable life of the vivacious, clever - and forgotten - Kennedy sister, who charmed the English aristocracy and was almost erased from her family history. The favourite child of...

A full-scale new and revised edition of a pioneering work of synthesis, this book provides a comprehensive chronological narrative of the history of the British empire between 1815 and 1914,...

In recent years, traditional views of a rapidly growing British economy between 1700 and 1850 have been overturned by convincing new research indicating that British economic growth was, in fact,...