Europe

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important....

The Age of Louis XIV is the biography of a period (1648 - 1715) that Spengler considered the apex of modern European civilization....

Spanning 1940 to 1965, this volume picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became prime minister - when Britain stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany....

This broad and panoramic series, ripe with the telling detail on which history can turn, will help you pull an enormous sweep of history together into one coherent framework....

The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague....

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1961, this worldwide bestselling classic chronicles the most infamous era of our times.

The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler’s Third Reich....

Rousseau and Revolution, the tenth volume of the Story of Civilization, ranges over a Europe in ferment, but centers on the passionate rebel-philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau....

A masterly chronicle of the Battle of Arnhem, which marshaled the greatest armada of troop-carrying aircraft ever assembled and cost the Allies nearly twice as many casualties as D-day....

The Age of Napoleon, the 11th and final volume of the Story of Civilization, surveys the amazing chain of events that wrenched Europe out of the Enlightenment and into the age of democracy....

De geheimen van de grootste genie uit de geschiedenis. Leonardo da Vinci wordt gezien als het meest creatieve genie ooit. Naast zijn wereldberoemde...

The fourth volume in Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, The Age of Faith surveys the medieval achievements and modern significance of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic life and culture....

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present.

The Renaissance chronicles the history of Italy from1304 to 1576. In this masterful work, listeners will encounter the poets Petrarch and Boccaccio, the fathers of the Renaissance....

Bronze Age Pervert explains that ancient man had something you have lost: confidence in his instincts and strength, knowledge in his blood. BAP shows how the Bronze Age mind-set can set you free and help you embark on the path of power....

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat....

The first five volumes from the landmark BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle....

The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the greatest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: “Let us reward our female offspring”....

This best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism....

The great legacy of The Iliad is its shattering revelation of what it means to be human in the face of life's uncertainty and fleeting mortality....

American journalist and author William L. Shirer was a war correspondent for six years in Nazi Germany, having a front-row seat to Hitler’s rise in influence and power....

This book, the first empire-wide overview of law as an instrument of policy in the eighteenth-century British Empire, offers an imaginative rethinking of the relationship between tolerance and empire....

The Age of Voltaire, the ninth volume of The Story of Civilization, is an in-depth examination of France and England in the first half of the 18th century....

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own....

Most of us know our limitations, especially when it comes to a career choice. We watch documentaries about A&E departments and the heroes who work there, and we think no. Oh no, thanks very much. We wouldn't have the nerve, or the stamina, or the resilience to do THAT. But who amongst us hasn’t looked at the woeful performance of a prime minister and thought: ‘Really, is that all there is to it? Even I could do that’. Now is your opportunity to familiarise yourself with what the job of prime minister actually is.

The 17th-century battlefield ushered in a new era, with formed musketeers and pistol-wielding cavalry gradually taking over from the knights and men-at-arms that had dominated the European battlefield. Based on a detailed study of the primary sources, Steel Lobsters tells the story of this transition through the history of the last fully armoured knights in England.

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions and lore. Here, Sarah Clegg takes us on a journey through midwinter to explore the lesser-known Christmas traditions.

This is the almost-forgotten story of Victorian Britain's strangest religious sect and its wealthy, mostly female, followers who believed they could ascend directly to heaven. Henry James Prince was a rogue Anglican Priest with a flare for the dramatic, and the founder of the Agapemone, or 'Abode of Love'. He also claimed to be the immortal conduit of The Holy Spirit and purportedly engaged in free love and ceremonial sex with his mostly female followers. But Prince's eventual death didn't mark the end of this strange set... he was promptly replaced by another.

Between the infamous Lindisfarne raid in 793 CE and the Norman conquest of 1066, the peoples we know now as the Vikings became one of the most far-ranging and influential civilizations in history. The Vikings are frequently portrayed as raiders, marauding across medieval Europe and Britain, but the culture and society of the medieval Nordic peoples was so much more diverse, multifaceted and influential than it is often depicted.

Begun in 1292, the royal chapel of St Stephen was the crowning glory of the old palace of Westminster – a place of worship for kings and a showcase of the finest architecture, ritual and music the Plantagenets could muster. But in 1548, as the Protestant Reformation reached its height, St Stephen's was given a new purpose as the House of Commons. Burned out in the great palace fire of 1834, the Commons chamber was then recreated on a remarkably similar medieval design, perpetuating a way of doing politics that is recognisable to this day.

Evoking a pivotal moment at the birth of modernity, a time of fear, conspiracy and uprising, and featuring some of the most unusual and brilliant personalities of the eighteenth century, Every Valley tells the story behind the creation of Handel’s Messiah: a cinematic and moving drama of hope in the darkness and the entangled lives that shaped a masterpiece.

Hermann Göring und Josef Goebbels waren zwei der bedeutendsten Akteure im nationalsozialistischen Regime. Beide gehörten zu den frühesten Anhänger Adolf Hitlers und stiegen in die höchsten Ränge der NSDAP und der Regierung des Dritten Reichs auf. Hermann Göring wurde im Ersten Weltkrieg als Fliegerheld gefeiert, aber seine militärische Karriere endete 1918 abrupt. In Hitlers Bewegung sah der eitle Selbstdarsteller eine Chance, ein neues, abenteuerliches, gewissermaßen heldisches Leben führen zu können.

Dive into the heart-wrenching world of Voices of New Belarus, a searing documentary drama by renowned Belarusian playwright-in-exile Andrei Kureichik. This powerful work captures the harrowing events of the 2020 Belarusian revolution through the deeply personal accounts of 16 political prisoners. Each monologue reveals a distinct story, a unique truth, and together they create an unflinching mosaic of resistance, sacrifice, and hope.

The island city of Tyre along the coast of Lebanon was for centuries an impregnable fortress and key to unlocking Phoenician and Persian power in the Near East. Its fall was first prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel; but it would not be Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who would take the city as the Bible foretold, but a Macedonian warrior king, Alexander. Alexander's siege of 332 BC was one of the most remarkable events in the classical world. The Siege of Tyre is the first book-length treatment of this critical and fascinating campaign

Eine Darstellung der untergehenden Weimarer Republik, wie es sie seit langem nicht gegeben hat. In einem packenden Panorama schildert Jens Bisky, gedankensprühend und geschichtensatt, die Jahre, in denen sich das Schicksal Deutschlands entschied. Als im Oktober 1929 Gustav Stresemann, der erfolgreiche Außenminister, starb, fragten sich die Zeitgenossen, wie es nun mit der Republik weitergeht. Gerade formierte sich eine faschistische Koalition, die 1933 dann an die Macht kam; Bauern warfen Bomben, die öffentlichen Haushalte litten unter wachsenden Defiziten, bald schien das parlamentarische System gelähmt.

Un relato hasta ahora desconocido de la corte del califa al-Ḥakam II durante la época de máximo esplendor del califato omeya Durante la segunda mitad del siglo X, el califato de Córdoba se convirtió en la mayor potencia política y cultural de Occidente. Lugar de visita de embajadas y comerciantes llegados desde todos los confines del Mediterráneo, al-Andalus conoció un gran esplendor reflejado en el florecimiento de las artes y las letras.

Coronada reina de Escocia con apenas seis días, María Estuardo es uno de los personajes más enigmáticos y apasionantes de su tiempo. Su vida y sus desdichas han suscitado la curiosidad de multitud de estudiosos. Educada en Francia, refinada, culta y hermosa, su adhesión al catolicismo en la turbulenta época de las revueltas protestantes, la complicada política sucesoria en Inglaterra, así como la fragilidad política del reino de Escocia la convirtieron en una traidora intrigante y en una santa de la Iglesia católica al mismo tiempo. El retrato de toda una época.

Con esta disparatada y cómica obra que inicia la serie "Los pecados capitales de la historia de España", Juan Eslava Galán nos ofrece anécdotas y curiosidades sobre relacionadas con el sexo y el deseo acontecidos a lo largo de la Historia de España. Como un moderno diablo cojuelo, Eslava nos destapa en este libro los tejados españoles para indagar en los variados modos en que hemos transgredido el sexto mandamiento de Isabel II acá.

Años cincuenta. Después de la prolongada miseria de la posguerra, los españoles atisban la luz al final del túnel: al confesonario, el botijo y la pandereta se agregan la Coca-Cola y el frigorífico, la tele y el gas butano. Banqueros y constructores se forran en las cacerías de la Escopeta Nacional. Franco se perpetúa en el poder a cambio de ceder a los americanos amplias parcelas de la antes irrenunciable soberanía nacional (las bases militares). Las calles se pueblan de vehículos (el mítico Biscúter, la Vespa, el Seat 600…).