17th Century

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 Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world....

During the long 18th century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. Author Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East....

Brought to you by Penguin. A Book of the Year 2021, as chosen by The Times, New Statesman, Telegraph and Times Literary Supplement. A groundbreaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history. Among foreign observers, 17th-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical...

Discover the “fascinating and outrageously readable” account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific in a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England—perfect for readers of Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough (Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times...

Now an esoteric of legal and criminal history, A Hangman's Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Franz Schmidt's executions, which included hangings, beheadings, and other methods, as well as details of each capital crime and the reason for the punishment....

In this engaging, anecdotal history of food, world conquest, and desire, a chef-turned-journalist tells the story of three legendary cities that transformed the globe in the quest for spice....

Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal....

Shortlisted for The British in India Book Prize 2025 'A spellbinding account of the first forgotten half of the English encounter with India with a fascinating history of the Mughal Empire' JOSEPHINE QUINN, author of How the World Made the West 'Compelling, highly readable' NANDINI DAS, author...

Why spiritual and supernatural yearnings, even investigations into the occult, flourished in the era of rationalist philosophy.....