Europe

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

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

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....

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

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

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....

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....

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 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 seventh volume of Will and Ariel Durant's renowned Story of Civilization chronicles the history of European civilization from 1558 to 1648....

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union - showing how Gorbachev's misguided reforms led to its demise In 1945, the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong, 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles, and was...

Viceroys is the story of the British aristocracy sent to govern India during the reigns of five British monarchs. It is also the story of how the modern British identity was established....

The sixth volume of Durant's acclaimed Story of Civilization, The Reformation chronicles the history of European civilization from 1300 to 1564....

Dive into the timeless tales of gods and heroes in this bestselling A-to-Z encyclopedia detailing classic myths and legends—perfect for curious readers and academics alike. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and...

Saladin remains one of the most iconic figures of his age. As the man who united the Arabs and saved Islam from Christian crusaders in the twelfth century, he is the Islamic world's preeminent hero.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Drawing on exhaustive research, this “masterful narrative history” (Booklist) details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world. “Thundering, magnificent...

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In his travels through Israel and Gaza, #1 International Bestselling author Douglas Murray has seen the best and the worst humanity has to offer, and he has no trouble choosing a side. Murray is not Jewish and before October 7, he had never lived in Israel...

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

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....

The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written...

In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style....

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Justin Avoth and Laurence Dobiesz. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Rowe read by Justin Avoth. 'Consider just this, and give your minds to this alone: whether or not what I say is just' Plato's...

In the tradition of The Rape of Nanking and A Problem from Hell, this account will change the way we think of Churchill and World War II....

An anthology of BBC Radio documentaries featuring the bestselling author Bill Bryson is the world's funniest travel writer, and a master of comic observation. His hugely popular books, spanning topics from linguistics to Shakespeare to the human body, have sold over 16 million copies and been...

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....

The story of Italian art is one of the greatest in human history: a golden thread that begins in ancient Rome, weaves through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and continues to shape the way we understand beauty, faith, and the world today. From the Etruscans’ vivid tomb frescoes to Michelangelo’s masterpieces on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Caravaggio’s dramatic use of light and shadow, Italian artists have created works that define Western Civilization.

A mysterious woman appears nightly at the bedside of a prince and sings to him until he falls sick with love for her. A determined hero tracks his beloved through several incarnations, struggling to win her back. A young warrior seeks a woman who turns into a swan. These are the plots of...

Join acclaimed travel writer and incurably curious hiker Tom Chesshyre in this celebration of the Peak District, Britain’s first National Park, on its 75th anniversary 'Funny, fair and honest, and effortlessly readable' Matthew Parris In the heart of England lies a fascinating landscape of...

How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte—manipulating European powers while building a global maritime empire At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, a fragile peace emerged in Europe. The continent's borders were redrawn, and the French...

A memoir of a child's forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin's Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordinary hardship. In April of 1940, six-year-old Ida woke to the sound of pounding on her door. Soviet soldiers forcibly packed her and her mother onto a train with thousands of their neighbors and deported them to remote Siberia, leaving them stranded to survive the brutal winter in subhuman conditions.

In 1949, the year of the Berlin airlift and the founding of the two post-war German states, Elisabeth Kusian (nurse, black marketeer, morphine and methamphetamine addict, and pathological liar) garroted and dismembered two people in a mini crime spree. Her actions both fascinated and terrified...

The Battle of Waterloo was one of the most dramatic and decisive battles ever fought. It marked the bloody end of the long struggle between the new ideals of the French Revolution and the established orders that had begun in 1793, and ushered in a century of peace in Europe. For such a massively important battle, Waterloo is all too often misunderstood, probably because the combatants have concentrated on the role of their own troops.

British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron...

How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when state institutions collapse, and militants take over? The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which started eight years before Russia's full-scale...

George Eliot pushed the boundaries of fiction and of Victorian society. She was an extraordinary woman whose unconventional life meant that she was judged harshly by family, friends, and strangers. Eliot wanted to draw attention to the feelings and motivations of ordinary people, so that we...