Secondhand History Books

For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean,...

In 1991 occurred the chance discovery of an "ice man" in the Otztaler Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. This almost perfectly preserved corpse of a neolithic hunter who died some...

Were the signs that Putin is a ruthless dictator there all along? How should we deal with President Xi of China? Given the world seems to be moving more and...

BOSNIA...NORTHERN IRELAND...IRAQ...AFGHANISTAN...For the past twenty years, some of the most dangerous places on earth. And for Major Chris Hunter, just some of the places where he has defused bombs in...

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived. Flappers is in part a biography of that...

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...

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....

Drawing on an unparalleled network of sources, contacts, and first hand testimonies, Con Coughlin takes us to the centre of Saddam's complex and bewildering regime, and beyond. Fully revised and...

National history is a vital part of national self-definition. Most books on the history of the world try to impose a uniform narrative, written usually from a single writer's point...

Drawing on a wealth of unexplored material - available for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union - Robert Service's biography of Stalin is the most...

A rich and fresh survey of women's lives between George III and the First World WarUsing diaries, letters, memoirs as well as social and statistical research, this book looks at...

Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have written the definitive account of 9/11. The shockwaves of the September 11, 2001 attacks in America reverberate to this day. Though Osama Bin Laden...

This volume examines the development of two sovereign nations over seventy-four momentous years.

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years...

A Sunday Times Book of the YearQueen Of Our Times is the definitive biography of Queen Elizabeth II by one of Britain's leading royal authorities, Robert Hardman. This commemorative edition...

At 4pm on a dark, wet winter's evening in November 1862, a cheap plywood coffin was buried to the eerie sound of silence: no lamentations, no panegyrics, for as the...

'An exceptional account.' Prospect'Enlightening.' SpectatorFor the first time in millennia we live without formal empires. But that doesn't mean we don't feel their presence rumbling through history. The Great Imperial...

Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Traitor of Colditz Robert Verkaik reveals the incredible never-before-told story of the role played by the Cambridge Spies in the British defeat at Arnhem"A...

Dallek never shies away from Kennedy's weaknesses, but also explores his strengths. The result is a full portrait of a bold, brave and truly human John F. Kennedy.

"I am Soldier" brings together the profiles of sixty soldiers who have fought over the past 2,500. These vivid accounts graphically depict the role of the soldier in battle often...

Winner of the Wolfson Prize for History, Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis is the concluding second volume of one of the greatest biographies of modern times. No figure in twentieth...

The storming of Berlin had been the Red Army's dream of vengeance ever since the German's invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941. Soviet soldiers had many accounts to...

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...

In the great wars of modern history maritime powers have always prevailed over land-based empires, whether Habsburg, Napoleonic, Nazi or Soviet. This book charts the growth of linked strengths -...

A long-overdue and dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians at work today. She was crowned Queen of Scotland at nine...

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...

Charles I and Charles II are the two most famous Stuart kings. Father and son, their personalities could hardly have been more different. The character of Charles I is crucial...

The History of Britain and Ireland: Prehistory to Today is a balanced and integrated political, social, cultural, and religious history of the British Isles. Kenneth Campbell explores the constantly evolving...

A follow-up to the best-selling biography 'Chink', this selection from private letters and intimate war diary has the impact of a fresh 'no holds barred' autobiography. Dorman-Smith the man -...

'Fluent and entertaining.' The Times 'Ferguson . . . constructs an entire scenario starting with Charles I's defeat of the Covenanters, running through three revolutions, the American, the French and...

This highly original synthesis is a clear and stimulating assessment of nineteenth-century British women. It aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the key historiographical debates and issues,...

Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not...

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...

The Golden Age of ancient Greek city-state civilization lasted from 490 to 336 BC, the period between the first wars against Persia and Carthage and the accession of Alexander the...