Secondhand History Books

'Simply the ultimate Second World War history'- SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, DAILY TELEGRAPHA CONFLICT LIKE NO OTHER, it has come to define the very idea of war itself. Great power rivalry...

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...

On August 9, ad 378, outside Adrianople in the Roman province of Thrace, the Roman Empire began to fall. Two years earlier, an unexpected flood of refugees from the tribe...

Focusing on the roots of the new nationalism in Russia, this is a portrait of the country since the aftermath of the 1991 coup. The author argues that Russia will...

"The Cage is a tightly written and clear-eyed narrative about one of the most disturbing human dramas of recent years. . . . A riveting, cautionary tale about the consequences...

The key issue of why the Ottoman Turks won the 1915 Gallipoli campaign has never been satisfactorily answered. This new history of the campaign aims to answer that question while...

1992 and 1993 will be remembered as the years in which a European country was destroyed. It was a land with a political and cultural history unlike any other, where...

What turned Adolf Hitler, a relatively normal and apparently unexceptional young man, into the very personification of evil? To answer this question, acclaimed historian Brigitte Hamann has turned to the...

A compilation of the oddest, most eccentric and truly bizarre customs, laws and superstitions of our forefathers. The people of Cathay demanded such a huge level of respect by children...

The term "biography" seems insufficiently capacious to describe the singular achievement of Joseph Frank's five-volume study of the life of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. One critic, writing upon...

Beginning with his childhood and the sexual abuse that he likely suffered in the care of his nurse, MacCarthy here offers an evenhanded portrait of the legendary Byron. She chronicles...

This ambitious book explores challenges to male hegemony throughout continental Europe. It focuses especially on France, but it also offers comparative material on developments in the German-speaking countries and in...

No company in our time has been as mysterious or as controversial as Blackwater. Founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997, it recruited special forces veterans and others...

This book lays bare the truth behind the adventures of Flashman and Sharpe. It includes ten eyewitness accounts of the battles, the privations and the adventure of armed service during...

Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of...

From the earliest times, commanders have sought knowledge of the enemy, his strengths and weaknesses, his dispositions and intentions. But how much effect, in the 'real time' of a battle...

Last year, the telly-watching public was gripped by Downton Abbey - the most successful British period drama in years and the number-one most-watched new drama programme of 2010. Captivated by...

The author offers a reassessment of how women's experience of work in 18th- century England was affected by industrialization and other elements of economic, social and technological change.; This study...

David Kynaston's Austerity Britain 1945-51, the first book in his series Tales of a New Jerusalem, was a major Sunday Times bestseller in 2007. Here is the second volume from...

'A thrilling celebration of lighthouses' i newspaperAn enthralling history of Britain's rock lighthouses, and the people who built and inhabited themLighthouses are enduring monuments to our relationship with the sea....

Between April 20th and June 22nd of 1945 the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin wrote about life within the falling city as it was sacked by the Russian...

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in...

'Elegant and multi-focal. Glorious!' Simon GarfieldThe humble pair of glasses might just be one the world's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur....

Examines the causes of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and also provides a reasoned approach as to what the future may hold. As the dust settled around the devastation of...

This biography of Ataturk aims to strip away the myth to show the complexities of the man beneath. Born plain Mustafa in Ottoman Salonica in 1881, he trained as an...

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...

Bob Woodward's new book draws from hundreds of interviews with key administration figures, their deputies and other firsthand sources. In addition, the book is based on extensive documentation, including internal...

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...

The ancient port of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, was once known as the 'Bride of Palestine'. It was one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the Mediterranean. Once...

Hailed as one of the finest books to emerge from the Vietnam War, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a fascinating insight into the lives of the soldiers...

This compendious celebration of ineptitude includes some of history's most spectacularly ill-conceived expeditions and entirely useless pursuits, and features tales of black comedy, insane foolhardiness, breathtaking stupidity and relentless perseverance...