From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
Notre Dame: A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals is Ken Follett's tribute to the Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the greatest cathedrals in the world, in aid of French heritage charity La Fondation du Patrimoine.
Surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs.
A fascinating and entertaining alternative history of the world told through fifty of the greatest failures, catastrophes and missed opportunities ever to occur.
A three-thousand year history of the world that examines the causes of war and the search for peaceIn three thousand years of history, China has spent at least eleven centuries at war. The Roman Empire was in conflict during at least 50 per cent of its lifetime. Since 1776, the United States has spent over one hundred years at war. The dream of peace has been universal in the history of humanity. So why have we so rarely been able to achieve it? In A Political History of the World, Jonathan Holslag has produced a sweeping history of the world, from the Iron Age to the present, that investigates the causes of conflict between empires, nations and peoples and the attempts at diplomacy and cosmopolitanism. A birds-eye view of three thousand years of history, the book illuminates the forces shaping world politics from Ancient Egypt to the Han Dynasty, the Pax Romana to the rise of Islam, the Peace of Westphalia to the creation of the United Nations. This truly global approach enables Holslag to search for patterns across different eras and regions, and explore larger questions about war, diplomacy, and power. Has trade fostered peace? What are the limits of diplomacy? How does environmental change affect stability? Is war a universal sin of power? At a time when the threat of nuclear war looms again, this is a much-needed history intended for students of international politics, and anyone looking for a background on current events.
A fascinating and surprising history of the world told through the lines people have drawn on maps, by the 'charming and outstandingly nerdish' author of The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything.
Not - as often imagined - of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.
A passionate history of Judaism; a world unfolding across many continents and five centuries by one of our greatest and internationally bestselling historians. Belonging is a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. From the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492 it tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleon's ruined army. The Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews' search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever. 'A magnificent achievement...' Jonathan Freedland, Guardian 'An extraordinary cultural journey, filled with astonishingly colourful and outrageous characters ... Schama delivers a superb and thrilling ride, both inspirational and tragic' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday
ANNE APPLEBAUM IS THE AUTHOR OF GULAG: A HISTORY, WHICH WON THE PULITZER PRIZE, OF IRON CURTAIN: THE CRUSHING OF EASTERN EUROPE, 1944-1956, WHICH WON THE CUNDILL PRIZE, OF RED FAMINE: STALIN'S WAR ON UKRAINE WHIC
History does not repeat, but it does instruct. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. This book deals with this topic.
A scintillating new history of Britain told through eighteen figures of British history - and what they achieved at eighteen years old. From Alice Loxton, bestselling author and social media sensation.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*Now with a fun pub quiz*'An idiosyncratic ride through history' Independent 'Holland and Sandbrook have pretty much reinvented popular history for the modern age' The TimesThe nation's favourite historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, take on the most curious moments in history, answering the questions we didn't even think to ask . . . - What was the most disastrous party in history?- How did a hair appointment almost blow Churchill's cover?- Why did the Nazis believe they were descended from the people of Atlantis?- What made Alfred the Great so great?From a British political leader who allegedly plotted to feed his lover to alligators, to a Brazilian emperor whose subjects mistook him for a banana, there is nothing too big or too small for Tom and Dominic to unpick.
The story of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, when for six extraordinary months the city was at the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals and prejudices of the settlement brokers.
