Secondhand History Books

The author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind looks at covert operations and assassination plots in the medieval period, matching anything to be found in our...

A Companion to the First World War brings together an international team of distinguished historians who provide a series of original and thought-provoking essays on one of the most devastating...

A gripping account of both an individual caught on the horns of an excruciating moral dilemma and a continent at a turning point. When Michela Wrong's Kenyan friend John Githongo...

Vera Brittain's bestselling TESTAMENT OF YOUTH was based on her own copious diaries, which have a much greater intimacy than the account written for publication. These are those diaries. They...

Blood and Treasure is the story of the economics of conflict from the Viking Age to the war in Ukraine.Wars are expensive, both in human terms and monetary ones. Since...

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world's first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project...

'Delightful, timely and critical' Cat Bohannon'Expertly weaves science, history and culture to illuminate the most misunderstood parts of our bodies' Dr Jennifer GunterThroughout history, religious scholars, medical men and -...

Chris Hani's assassination in 1993 gave rise to one of South Africa's great imponderables: if he had survived, what impact would he have had on politics and government in South...

Were the Vikings, as contemporary description had it, a 'valiant, wrathful, foreign, purely pagan people' who swept in from the sea to plunder and slaughter? 'War-wolves keen in hungry quest',...

Health, disease and society in Europe 1500-1800 considers how the body was viewed by the medical profession from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and challenges established ideas in the field...

*A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK and GUARDIAN BEST PAPERBACK OF APRIL 2024*The first book to tell the story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front -...

The two great financial crises of the past century are the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession, which began in 2008. Both occurred against the backdrop of...

What was the tallest building of the ancient world? Or the average life expectancy in medieval Byzantium? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ritual human sacrifice...

A New York Times BestsellerThe international best-selling author explores the revolutions, past and present, that define the chaotic, polarized and unstable age in which we live.Fareed Zakaria first warned of...

This is the first biography of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh - both royal, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, but, in temperament and upbringing, two very different people....

Part of a series of often controversial biographies of statesmen and women who have shaped the modern world, this book features Franklin Delano Roosevelt who served 12 years in the...

From the makers of the award-winning BBC series and Dr Nick Barratt, the UK's leading authority on family history, comes the definitive, must-have guide to researching your family's roots and...

It takes more than 10 billion years to create just the right conditions on one planet for life to begin. It takes another three billion years of evolving life forms...

The greatest 'unsolved mystery' of the American Southwest relates to the Anasazi, the native peoples who in the 11th century converged on Chaco Canyon (now New Mexico) and built a...

An imaginative investigation into dignity and historical injustice through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans'There must...

From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, "the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,"* comes a spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history....

Death Before Glory! is a highly readable, thoroughly researched and comprehensive study of the British army's campaigns in the West Indies during the Napoleonic period and of the extraordinary experiences...

Andrew Roberts's Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses who led the West to Victory in WWII tells the story of how four great leaders fought each other over how best...

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation...

Over the last ten years, journalist and al-Qa'ida expert Abdel Bari Atwan has cultivated uniquely well-placed sources and amassed a wealth of information about al-Qa'ida's origins, masterminds and plans for...

Winner of the Orwell Prize The second part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from...

The definitive biography of the fiercely vigilant and politically astute First Lady who shaped one of the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century: Nancy Reagan.The made-in-Hollywood marriage of Ronald...

Engaging and perceptive . . . Ms. Borman offers deft and thoughtful assessments of every reign . . . the chronological approach is enriched by details that help to humanize...

This book considers the role of critics and observers, the role and treatment of the press within Zimbabwe and the often contradictory responses to Mugabe from the international community. It...

'If fate is against me and I'm killed, so be it, but make it quick and painless. If I'm wounded, don't let me be crippled. But above all don't let...