Secondhand History Books

The twentieth century in Europe was an urban century: it was shaped by life in, and the view from, the street. Women were not liberated in legislatures, but liberated themselves...

A biography of the poet and libertine the Earl of Rochester.Of the glittering, licentious court around King Charles II, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was the most notorious....

Born in 1786, by the time she was 15 years old, Harriette Wilson was well on her way to becoming Regency London's most sought-after courtesan. She counted amongst her conquests...

Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was the archbishop of Canterbury who guided England through the early Reformation--and Henry VIII through the minefields of divorce....

Imagine you woke up one morning to find everything created by engineers had disappeared. What would you see?No cars, no houses; no phones, bridges or roads. No tunnels under tidal...

The paradise myth has been one of the most powerful motivators in human history, influencing and energizing all kinds of individuals and groups. From the Assassins of twefth-century Persia to...

In this compelling book, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from...

'Phenomenal... Utterly absorbing' Sunday Times, 'Book of the Week''[A] fabulous romp of a book'***** Mail on Sunday A Financial Times 'Book to Read in 2023'In 1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes,...

Contrary to popular belief, fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world was round. The idea of the world as a sphere...

The Geographical Tradition presents the history of an essentially contested tradition. By examining a series of key episodes in geography's history since 1400, Livingstone argues that the messy contingencies of...

In January 2007, the young and optimistic soldiers of the 2-16, the American infantry battalion known as the Rangers, were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. Their job...

With The Warrior's Honor and Virtual War, Blood & Belonging forms part of the acclaimed trilogy by Michael Ignatieff on the face of modern conflict.In 1993 Michael Ignatieff set out...

Built secretly by Laird's on the Mersey, to the order of the Confederate States during the American Civil War, the Alabama embarked on a hugely destructive world-wide campaign against Federal...

When the world's press published photographs of the Duchess of York in various compromising poses with her "financial adviser", John Bryan, her royal career was allegedly finished. But the affair...

'Highly engaging . . . The creeping escalation of oppression and rebellion is often thrillingly told . . . A powerful story of a history that remains far from settled'...

The spectre of the Great War still haunts the world. No other conflict so dramatically illustrates the senselessness of war, the slaughter of the innocents, as the 1914-18 conflict. And...

This powerful interpretation of English history provides a completely new framework for understanding how Britain emerged in the eighteenth century as a major international power. John Brewer's brilliant analysis makes...

This book examines the development of the various styles of military head-dress badge from 1751, when the use of private crests and badges was forbidden, to the introduction of 'cap...

War-time love story set in Abyssinia, Eritrea and the Yemen 1935-1945. Amedeo Guillet is still alive and living in County Meath, Ireland. Khadija is lost. This is the story of...

Christina Lamb's The Africa House is the bestselling account of an English gentleman and his African dream. In the last decades of the British Empire, Stewart Gore-Brown build himself a...

Antonia Fraser's bestselling account of the lives of women in seventeenth-century England.Just how weak were the women of the Civil War era? What could they expect beyond marriage and childbirth...

Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2024: History Book of the Year'Hotel Lux is an unforgettable book, bringing to life not only its protagonists but an entire world, and offering...

A burgeoning new city is built on the dreams of the American gold rush. It is also built upon a landscape that has been stretching, sliding and breaking apart for...

Most believed it had begun when God placed Adam & Eve, fully formed, into the Garden of Eden. Archaeology changed all that. Besides revealing to us the treasures, tombs and...

Winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2014 A rich historical biography of 'those wild Wyndhams' - three cultured aristocratic sisters born into great privilege in late Victorian...

In 1950, James Paul Donahue inherited a $15 million Woolworth's fortune and on the same day met the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. This book is the remarkable story of...