Europe

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Inglorious Empire written and read by Shashi Tharoor....

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

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

Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives....

The story of Britain from the earliest settlements in 3000BC to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603....

Since its publication in 1960, this monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the 20th century’s blackest hours....

Berlin, 1933. William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered academic from Chicago, has become America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proves to be a turning point in history....

Spain has played a unique and essential role in Western civilization....

Professor Kramer tackles the major intellectual themes and debates that decisively shaped 20th-century European culture....

In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides the definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the Muqaddima....

At midnight on 15 August, 1947, India left the British Empire....

The story of Troy speaks to all of us - the kidnapping of Helen, a queen celebrated for her beauty, sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against the city of Troy, to which they will lay siege for 10 whole and very bloody years.... 

In the space of 400 years, Western man methodically set out to explore and map the entire earth....

Roberts argues that, far from being a tyrant or incompetent, George III was one of our most admirable monarchs. George III shows one of Britain's premier historians at his sparkling best....

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of....

In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians....

When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery....

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Niall Ferguson's provocative best seller, Civilization: The West and the Rest, read brilliantly by the author himself....

Léonard de Vinci était enfant illégitime, homosexuel, gaucher, végétarien, distrait et parfois hérétique. Cette inadéquation aux moeurs de l'époque a décuplé sa créativité...

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager, football clubs, and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe. England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities....

Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be....

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....

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality....

In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong. Of the 300 men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived....

From Neil MacGregor, the author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this is a view of Germany like no other....

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants.

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants.

In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians. Now, on the book's 40th anniversary, this fully revised and expanded edition illuminates further the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest.

Als Wolodymyr Selenskyj – bis dahin ein populärer Schauspieler und Comedian – 2019 überraschend die ukrainische Präsidentschaftswahl gewann, ging die Welt davon aus, dass er ein schwaches Staatsoberhaupt sein und sich vom Kreml mithilfe der Oligarchen leicht lenken lassen würde. Doch das Gegenteil war der Fall: Selenskyj erwies sich als Mann mit Rückgrat, als mutig und unbeugsam. Im Angesicht des russischen Überfalls auf die Ukraine wurde er zu einem wahren Staatsmann, der selbst seinen Feinden Respekt abringt.

A strong emotional attachment to the memory of empire runs deep in British culture. In recent years, that memory has become a battleground in a long-drawn ideological war, inflecting debates on race, class, gender, culture, the UK’s future and its place in the world. This provocative and passionate book surveys the scene of the imperial memory wars in contemporary Britain, exploring how the myths that structure our views of empire came to be, and how they inform the present.  

Questo volume traccia la parabola dell'Urss dalle origini fino al suo trionfo sul nazismo. Attingendo alla documentazione resasi disponibile dopo il collasso dell'Urss e alle ricerche condotte su di essa, l'autore ha potuto operare una ricostruzione nuova, e diversamente credibile, di una storia che ha affascinato e impaurito il XX secolo.

Duffy engages with some of the central aspects of Western religion in the thousand years between the decline of pagan Rome and the rise of the Protestant Reformation. In the process, he opens windows on the vibrant and multifaceted beliefs and practices by which medieval people made sense of their world: the fear of death and the impact of devastating pandemic, holy war against Islam and the invention of the blood libel against the Jews, provision for the afterlife and the continuing power of the dead over the living, the meaning of pilgrimage and the evolution of Christian music.

It wasn't long-ago that Britons could have been as at home in Varanasi as they could have been in Wolverhampton—why?—because the shape and location of Britain's land-mass has not always been the same, and with large parts of Britain scattered across the globe, British borders and its identity has always been on the move. But, by knowing more about the twelve pivotal moments that occurred over a 2,000-year period, we can not only gain a full sense of our British history, but we can also understand where we are heading.

Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government's broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both family history and her own memories of growing up in the 1950s and '60s, as well as her working life as a district nurse and local police officer, Jean Fullerton vividly depicts this fascinating part of London.

Henrietta Maria is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain's Three Kingdoms. Condemned as that 'Popish brat of France', a 'notorious whore' and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic—so causing a civil war—and a cruel and bigoted mother. Leanda de Lisle's White King was hailed as 'the definitive modern biography about Charles I' (Observer). Here she considers Henrietta Maria's point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen. 

Famed historian, university professor, and author of the groundbreaking "The Case for Colonialism" Bruce Gilley demonstrates that, contrary to modern presuppositions, German colonialism from its early roots to the mid-twentieth century served overall as a global force for good in the world, elevating the lives of its subjects and encouraging scientific development while allowing native cultures to flourish within its governance.

"Ich brauche Munition, keine Mitfahrgelegenheit". Im Februar 2022 geht dieser Satz um die Welt. Über Nacht wird Wolodymyr Selenskyj vom angeschlagenen Präsidenten der gefühlt fernen Ukraine zur zentralen Figur im Kampf für ein freies Europa. So wenig sich der Westen trotz des Kriegs im Donbass für die Ukraine interessierte, so wenig war bekannt über den Mann, der vom Juristen zum Komiker zum Staatsmann geworden war und nach den Maidan-Protesten gegen Korruption und für eine Annäherung an Europa antrat.

The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding the Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. 'Y service' was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world.

Il fascismo pretese di erigere un nuovo Stato, ma riutilizzò abbondantemente in chiave fascista elementi e residui dello Stato liberale. Autoritario e dittatoriale, concentrò il potere pubblico, ma accettò anche la sua pluralizzazione. Eliminò libere elezioni, creò un surrogato della rappresentanza politica, si valse di organizzazioni satelliti, ma ricorse ad amministrazioni parallele per gestire la crisi economica. 

1966-2016. A cinquant'anni dall'evento della devastante alluvione di Firenze, un' anziana signora racconta a sua nipote i giorni immediatamente dopo la catastrofe, ritrovandosi nel fango e in un lontano, ma ancora vivo amore.