Historical

As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the 20th century....

Gandhi's nonviolent struggles against racism, violence and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety and adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself....

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

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time....

Based on previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and dramatic interviews with Hitler's colleagues and associates....

There is perhaps no political figure in modern history who did more to secure and protect the Indian nation than Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel....

This excellent audiobook is the first of its kind and has been selected by a number of organisations as a worthy introduction to the life of Prophet Muhammad....

A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians - now with a new afterword.... 

When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift, violent insurgencies, and economic crisis. Despite being unloved by his people, mistrusted by his party, and ruling under the shadow of 10 Janpath, Rao transformed the economy.... 

Written between 1717 and 1790, and originally referred to by its author as simply Memoirs, Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is considered the pioneering example of the genre....

One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime comes from the diary of a 13-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank.... 

Cleopatra’s palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue....

The highly anticipated sequel to India's Most Fearless brings you 14 more stories of astonishing fearlessness, and gets you closer than ever before to the personal bravery that Indian military men display in the line of duty....

Born and raised in Essex, Maajid Nawaz was recruited into politicised Islam as a teenager....

Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most memorable books in the face of the holocaust that Nazi Germany and its collaborators unleashed on European Jews between 1941 and 1945 across German-occupied Europe....

The famous journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich documents his front row seat at the pivotal events leading up to World War II....

Darkness engulfs the Indian subcontinent. The 17th century is destined to be an era of brutal wars, incessant oppression and physical and spiritual carnage in the name of religion....

The very first attempt to chronicle the women who played a vital role in building the Mughal empire, Daughters of the Sun is an illuminating and gripping history of a little known aspect of the most magnificent dynasty the world has ever known....

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist....

J. Robert Oppenheimer, an iconic figure of the 20th century, was a brilliant physicist who led efforts to build an atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress....

Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms - "the Annex"....

Crusading knights, Tudor monarchs, the D-Day landings and more. Travel back in time with some of the world's most notable historians....

A great warrior and skilled administrator, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, better known as Shivaji, was the founder of the great Maratha Empire....

One of the most famous and influential autobiographies ever written, Benjamin Franklin Ki Atmakatha throws light on the life of this renowned polymath and scientist extraordinaire. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and was titled The First American....

Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana for a crime he did not commit, Henri Charriere became obsessed with one goal: escape....

Qui était Francisco Franco Bahamonde, dernier survivant parmi les grands dictateurs du xxe siècle, né en 1892 et mort en 1975? "Un militaire chimiquement pur", répondait un prêtre qui le connaissait depuis l'enfance. À l'âge des radars et des fusées, des missiles atomiques et des bombes à laser, pouvons-nous comprendre un militaire du temps de la baïonnette?

On Thursday, August 28, 1947, a 30-year-old millionaire named Manuel Laureano Rodriguez—Manolete—and a Miura bull named Islero killed each other. The Death of Manolete recounts the extraordinary life and demise of this young bullfighter, from the childhood that made the Spanish boy and the sacrifice that made the man to the girl who brought him love and the acclaim that brought him incredible success. 

Imagine being born into a world where everything about you—the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth—designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people. 

In the last years of her life, Teresa Lim's mother, Violet Chang, had copies of a cherished family photograph made for those in the portrait who were still alive. The photo is mounted on cream card with the name of the studio stamped at the bottom in Chinese characters. The place and date on the back: Hong Kong, 1935. Teresa would often look at this photograph, enticed by the fierceness and beauty of her great-aunt Fanny looking back at her. But Fanny never seemed to feature in the told and retold family stories. Why? she wondered. 

By a series of coincidences, Mark Kurlansky’s life has always been intertwined with Ernest Hemingway's legend, starting with being in Idaho the day of Hemingway’s death. The Importance of Not Being Ernest explores the intersections between Hemingway’s and Kurlansky’s lives, resulting in creative accounts of two inspiring writing careers. Travel the world with Mark Kurlansky and Ernest Hemingway in this personal memoir, where Kurlansky details his ten years in Paris and his time as a journalist in Spain.

Con la sua passione ha creduto nel cambiamento. Con la sua forza lo ha reso possibile. È l'autunno del 1894 e la ventiquattrenne Maria è una brillante studentessa di medicina. Eppure sono tempi difficili per una donna all'università: Maria non può neanche raggiungere il dipartimento di Anatomia senza essere accompagnata da un uomo. Nonostante questo, tra pregiudizi e umiliazioni, Maria riesce a studiare e ben presto inizia a lavorare come assistente in due ospedali romani.

Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress national independence, and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized.

My Boy Jack is the extraordinary story of Kipling's search for his son. John Kipling was reported missing in the Battle of Loos on the Western Front in 1915. His father, Rudyard, had pulled strings to get his myopic son into the firing line. Devastated at the loss of his only son, Rudyard undertook the sad mission to find John's grave but tragically never succeeded in his quest.

Richard Carr’s Charlie Chaplin places politics at the centre of the filmmaker’s life as it looks beyond Chaplin’s role as a comedic figure to his constant political engagement both on and off the screen. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources from across the globe, Carr provides an in-depth examination of Chaplin’s life as he made his way from Lambeth to Los Angeles. From his experiences in the workhouse to his controversial romantic relationships and his connections with some of the leading political figures of his day, this book sheds new light on Chaplin’s private life.

"Saddam" er en bog om magt. Om hvordan den erobres, hvordan den fastholdes, og også om, hvordan den mistes igen. Bogen fortæller historien om personen Saddam Hussein og hans vej fra det lerklinede barndomshjem i Tikrit-området til en position som Iraks enevældige hersker for til sidst at blive styrtet af USA. Men den er også en tidløs beskrivelse af diktaturets væsen i sin mest ekstreme form.

Willy Blum war sechzehn Jahre alt, als er in Auschwitz-Birkenau ermordet wurde. Von ihm blieb nur ein Name auf einer Liste, neben dem durchgestrichenen Namen Jerzy Zweigs, der durch Bruno Apitz' Roman "Nackt unter Wölfen" weltberühmt wurde. Über Willy Blum und seine Familie wusste man bislang nichts. Annette Leo hat sich auf die Suche gemacht und erzählt die Geschichte der Familie Blum und zugleich auch die Geschichte des Verschweigens einer Opfergruppe in der Nachkriegszeit: die der Sinti und Roma.

Missionæren Hans Egede var et sammensat menneske, som især var drevet af det mål at gøre grønlænderne kristne. Niels Fenger fortæller om Hans Egedes tid i Grønland, hans mission og hans møde med den på det tidspunkt helt ukendte og anderledes kultur og hedenske befolkning, som han brændende ønskede at omvende til sin egen tro.

Niels Stensen (1638-1686) er en af de mest betydningsfulde danske naturvidenskabsmænd gennem historien. Gennem 350 år har han fascineret og inspireret både fagfolk og lægfolk i ind- og udland. I løbet af et enkelt årti, 1660’erne, gjorde han en lang række epokegørende opdagelser indenfor anatomi, geologi og krystallografi. Kaster Jesper Brandt Andersen lys over Niels Stensens naturvidenskabelige indsats, baggrunden for hans enestående karriere og årsagerne til hans konversion til katolicismen, som fik ham til at vende sig fra naturvidenskaben.

Legenden om Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel har været stedfast i verdenshistorien i mere end 60 år. Han var uden tvivl Hitlers mest berømte general og i historien står han som en enestående mand - stærkt motiveret, utroligt intelligent og overlegent dygtig, men ikke fejlfri. Rommel, der kunne være påtrængende, uforudsigelig og arrogant, led også af depression. Han blev født i 1891 i det sydlige Tyskland og sluttede sig til militæret som 18-årig.

Giovane, ottimista, rivoluzionario. Italo Balbo, il più capace aviatore della sua epoca, verrà abbattuto dalla propria contraerea soltanto pochi giorni dopo l'inizio della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, in quello che passerà alla storia come uno dei peggiori incidenti di fuoco amico. Eppure non tutti credono che si tratti di una fatalità, e forse c'è molto di più da sapere sul "fascista scomodo" che lo stesso Mussolini descriverà come l'unico uomo che sarebbe stato in grado di ucciderlo.