Global History

On 6 June, 1924, George Mallory donned an oxygen set and set off for the summit of Everest with his young partner Andrew Irvine. The next day, they were glimpsed through clouds heading upwards, but after that they were never seen again. Whether they died on the way up or on the way down, no one knows. In the years...

Fallen by Mick Conefrey is a marvellously researched and written story about the enigma of George Mallory and the fulfilment of his "Because it's there!" 'Mick Conefrey's gripping account explores the 1924 expedition and the enigma of the man who nearly made it to the summit.' Financial Times 'Mick Conefrey has become one of our finest gazetteers of the Himalaya.'...

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition. Engineers of Human Souls is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers—once the faithful servants of authority—into figures of political consequence. Maurice Barres, who first wielded the politics of identity. Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism. Maxim Gorky,...

How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil ‘deep state’? In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, a group of New York writers concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the USA if permanent global peace broke out....

Shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown Award 2023 The history of a demonic tradition that was stolen from women – and then won back again. 'Remarkable work... Extraordinary, meticulous detail' Literary Review 'Deftly fuses scholarly rigour, control of literary and archaeological sources' BBC History Magazine Creatures like Lilith, the seductive first wife of Adam, and mermaids, who lured sailors to...

A sweeping reassessment of our longing for the past, from the rise of "retro" to the rhetoric of Brexit and Trump. Nostalgia has a bad reputation. Its critics dismiss it as mere sentimentality or, worse, a dangerous yearning for an imagined age of purity. Nostalgia is routinely blamed for trivialising the past and obscuring its ugly sides. In Yesterday, Tobias...

Ancient shipwrecks in crystal seas, mythical princesses preserved in ice, and astonishing lost rituals — this is the story of archaeology. Professor Michael Scott uncovers the true stories behind history's most monumental discoveries, unearthing traps, curses, and buried treasure along the way. Full of extraordinary characters — from glory hunters to forgotten heroes — X Marks the Spot explores our...

I have invented nothing, but memory weaves its own histories. These are travel stories, ranging in time and place. Some are memories of a re-imagined past, others more personal. Simon Loftus's explorations begin with a performance of Hamlet off the coast of Africa, in 1607, and each of the stories that follow echoes and reflects the opening words of that...

For Australians, Kokoda is the iconic battle of World War II, yet few people know just what happened - and just what our troops achieved. Now, bestselling author Peter FitzSimons tells the Kokoda story in a gripping, moving story for all Australians. Conditions on the track were hellish - rain was constant, the terrain close to inhospitable, food and ammunition...

An incisive account of Erdoğan’s Turkey – showing how its troubling transformation may be short-lived. Since coming to power in 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, intervening in regional flashpoints from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya. Its democracy, sustained by the...

Imperial conquest and colonisation depended on pervasive raiding, slaving, and plunder. European empires amassed global power by asserting a right to use unilateral force at their discretion. They Called It Peace is a panoramic history of how these routines of violence remapped the contours of empire and reordered the world from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. In an account...

The Way It Was was named Book of the Year in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and New Statesman. "A powerful illumination of a lost world that is nevertheless part of living memory." - Simon Heffer, 'Books of the Year', Daily Telegraph "A joyous new book on post-war Britain." - Daily Mail When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne...

The Wandering Army offers a compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, illustrating how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe. At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army's military tactics were tired and outdated, having stagnated after three decades of peace. The army's leadership was conservative,...

The Story of Greece and Rome offers an extraordinary tale of the intermingled civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, spanning more than six millennia, from the late Bronze Age to the seventh century. The magnificent civilisation created by the ancient Greeks and Romans is the greatest legacy of the classical world. However, narratives about the "civilised" Greek and Roman empires...

Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? In this remarkable book, The Scent of Empires, Karl Schlögel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world's most celebrated perfumes. In...

Enter The Madman's Gallery - the perfect gift book for any art lover. Discover an eccentric exploration through the curious history of art, to find the strangest paintings, sculptures, drawings, and other artistic oddities ever made. From the author of the bestseller The Madman’s Library (Sunday Times Literature Book of the Year 2020, Radio 4 Book of the Week) comes...

A human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull’s cry and the cove’s splendour have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the...

Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 'Magnificent. Narrative history at its vivid and compelling best' Fergal Keane The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry...

An urgent examination of the great wave of change breaking over today's world – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and New York Times bestselling author of The Death of Truth ‘A profoundly inspiring and prophetic perspective on the contemporary world’ Ai Weiwei In the twenty-first century, a wave of political, cultural and technological change has capsized our old certainties and...

Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, David Livingstone, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong: these are some of the greatest travellers of all time. This book chronicles their stories and many more, describing epic voyages of discovery from the extraordinary migrations out of Africa by our earliest ancestors to the latest voyages into space. In antiquity, we follow Alexander the Great to the Indus...

'An exceptional account.' - Prospect 'Enlightening.' - Spectator For the first time in millennia, we live without formal empires. But that doesn't mean we don't feel their presence rumbling through history. The Great Imperial Hangover examines how the world's imperial legacies are still shaping the thorniest issues we face today. From Russia's incursions in the Ukraine to Brexit; from Trump's...

'Step right up!' and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth - the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible - a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking...

What did the Georgians think of themselves, and of their exciting, turbulent, and controversial times? The Georgian era (1714–1830) was a time of innovations. It saw the end of monarchical absolutism, the world’s first industrial revolution, and deep transformations in religious and cultural life. Britain vastly expanded its global exploration and settlements overseas and played an ignoble role in the...

The Economic Weapon: The first international history of the emergence of economic sanctions during the interwar period and the legacy of this development “Valuable . . . offers many lessons for Western policy makers today.”—Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal "The lessons are sobering.”—The Economist “Original and persuasive. . . . For those who see economic sanctions as a relatively mild...

The Times Best History Book of 2023A Book of the Year pick for The Times, Sunday Times, BBC History Magazine, Guardian, Independent and Financial TimesA BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week | An instant #2 Sunday Times Bestseller'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history' Financial Times'Vast, learned and timely work' Sunday Times ------ From the...

This sweeping history reorients our understanding of the Middle East, placing the Gulf at the heart of globalised trade and cross-cultural encounters. World history began in the Persian Gulf. The ancient port cities that dotted its coastlines created the first global seaboard, a place from where faiths and cultures from around the world set sail and made contact. More than...

An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria’s ongoing civil war. “One of the best informed and non-partisan accounts of the Syrian tragedy yet published.”—Patrick Cockburn, Independent Syria’s brutal, long-lasting civil war is widely viewed as a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign...

We are living in a new urban age, and its most tangible expression is the supertall: megastructures that are dramatically bigger, higher, and more ambitious than any in history. Cities around the world are racing to build the first mile-high building, stretching the limits of engineering and design as never before. In this fascinating work of urban history and design,...

The story of the sixteenth-century's epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific. Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans, they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese...

'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking' Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian 'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history' Mihir Bose, Irish Times Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose. The Economist The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its...

One of the most eminent historians of our age investigates the extraordinary success of five small maritime states. "A superb survey of the perennial opportunities and risks in what Herman Melville called ‘the watery part of the world.’" —William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812—winner of...

Victor Hugo meets Papillon in this effervescent memoir of war, slavery, and self-discovery, told with aplomb and humour in its first English translation. A pioneering work of Ottoman Turkish literature, Prisoner of the Infidels brings the seventeenth-century memoir of Osman Agha of Timişoara—slave, adventurer, and diplomat—into English for the first time. The sweeping story of Osman's life begins upon his...

A global account of pirates and their modus operandi, from the Middle Ages to the present day In the twenty-first century, piracy has regained a central place in Western culture, thanks to a surprising combination of Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, as well as the dramatic rise of modern-day piracy around Somalia and the Horn of...

A thought-provoking reflection on pilgrimage past and present, and a compelling exploration of its relevance today. The enormous rise in popularity in recent decades of the Camino, the ancient pilgrim path that stretches from France, across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, is part of a wider phenomenon being witnessed on other time-honoured pilgrim routes around the globe and across...

A history of wars through the ages and across the world, and the irrational calculations that so often lie behind them Benjamin Franklin once said, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.” But what determines whether war or peace is chosen? Award-winning sociologist Michael Mann concludes that it is a handful of political leaders—people with emotions and...

Over the last few years, it has been impossible to ignore the steady resurgence of xenophobia. The European migrant crisis and immigration from Central America to the United States have placed Western advocates of globalization on the defensive, and a ‘New Xenophobia’ seems to have emerged out of nowhere. In this fascinating study, George Makari traces the history of xenophobia...

A Spectator Book of the Year 'Sweeping . . . Poetic . . . Not only readable but also vital' - Literary Review 'A terrific storyteller' - New York Times 'Exceptional . . . tender and beautifully written' - Country Life The groundbreaking story of Nomadic peoples on the move across history. Tracing the epic paths of wanderers across twelve...

A new look which fundamentally overturns our understanding of this famously "out of touch" queen. “Presents Marie-Antoinette as much more than a symbol whose meaning is in the eye of her beholder . . . neither martyr nor voluptuary but rather a serious participant in politics.” — Lynn Hunt, New York Review of Books “Splendid. . . . Masterly. ....

A fascinating and approachable deep dive into the colonial roots of the global wine industry. Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britain's surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative. This...

During the last fifty years, the writing of history underwent two massive transformations. First, powered by Marxism and other materialist sociologies, the great social history wave instated the value of social explanation. Then, responding to new theoretical debates, the cultural turn upset many of those freshly earned certainties. Each challenge was profoundly informed by politics—from issues of class, gender, and...

With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification—and revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germany's evolution from the loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to...

Fallen by Mick Conefrey is a marvellously researched and written story about the enigma of George Mallory and the fulfilment of his "Because it's there!" 'Mick Conefrey's gripping account explores the 1924 expedition and the enigma of the man who nearly made it to the summit.' — Financial Times 'Mick Conefrey has become one of our finest gazetteers of the...

'A brilliant and important book ... Five Stars!' Mark Dolan, talkRADIO 'An important new book' Daily Express An alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever told and how they've been used over time. Lincoln did not believe all men were created equal. The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the Spanish Conquistadors. And Churchill was...

From the author of bestseller Fake History, Otto English, comes a shocking yet hilarious look at ten of the greatest liars in history. 'A brilliant book.' James O'Brien Whether it's virtuous leaders in just wars, martyrs sacrificing all for a cause, or innovators changing the world for the better, down the centuries supposedly great men and women have risen to...

Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind's development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world. Taking...

Breathtakingly good . . . Exiles is completely sui generis. - EDMUND DE WAAL Atkins spins a marvellous tapestry of colourful tales, beautifully weaving history and travel accounts. - ANDREA WULF, author of The Invention of Nature A volume for our times. - SARA WHEELER, THE SPECTATOR A fascinating study of exile and its effects. - OBSERVER This is the...

Equality is in crisis. Our world is filled with soaring inequalities, spanning wealth, race, identity, and nationality. Yet how can we strive for equality if we don't understand it? As much as we have struggled for equality, we have always been profoundly sceptical about it. How much do we want, and for whom? Darrin M. McMahon's Equality is the definitive...

An award-winning historian places the corporation—more than the Crown—at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today. Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all...

The third volume in the much-admired The Colour of Time series. A Woman's World, 1850–1960 explores the many roles – domestic, social, cultural, and professional – played by women across the world before second-wave feminism took hold. Using Marina Amaral's colourized images and Dan Jones's words, this survey features women both celebrated and ordinary, whether in the science lab or...

Maps offer us the chance to see not just how our world appears today, but how it once looked. Travis Elborough takes us on a voyage in search of the disappearing, submerged, and lost landscapes and manmade wonders that have vanished from modern atlases. Discover ancient seats of power and long-forgotten civilisations: the Mayan city of Palenque, the uncanny stone...

Atlas of Forgotten Places is a collection of maps so unique and left behind that you won't even believe they exist. From ancient ruins and crumbling castles to more recent relics—an art deco New York subway station, a Soviet ghost town in the Arctic Circle, a flooded Thai mall teeming with aquatic life—Travis Elborough takes you on a journey into...

Indulge in this collection of the best astronomy books from the past 800 years. The Astronomers' Library is a rich history of astronomy (and astrology) publishing across Europe. This is a carefully selected arrangement of publications from all over the continent—Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. And of course, as the original world leader in astrology, the Middle...

Amongst the Ruins explores the loss of ancient civilisations, the collapse of ruling elites and the disappearance of more recent communities and their local traditions. Some of these are now sealed under 3,000-year-old peat, others lost to rising seas or sands, and the carcasses of 20th-century buildings which serve as reminders of the destructive power of war. These compelling stories...

A panoramic history of the Muslim world from the age of the Prophet Muammad to the birth of the modern era. This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth...

This brilliantly concise history of the Pacific Ocean succeeds in examining both the indigenous presence on the ocean's islands and Western control or influence over its islands and shores. There is a particular focus on the period from the 1530s to 1890, with a greater Western coastal and oceanic presence in the Pacific, beginning with the Spanish takeover of the...

In Cook's relatively short but adventurous life (1728-79), he voyaged to the eastern and western seaboards of North America, the North and South Pacific, and the Arctic and Antarctic, bringing about a new comprehension of the world's geography and its peoples. He was a linking figure between the grey speculation of the early 18th century and the industrial age of...

An extraordinary cast, globe-spanning action, this is the gripping, era-defining origin story for today's conflicts. Immersive, globe-spanning and full of detail and drama, The Revolutionists is an unprecedented account of a seismic decade that transformed the modern world. In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the...

Taking readers on a world-wide journey, bestselling historian Natasha Tidd examines how fifty murders shaped the course of history. From early serial killers to the birth of criminology, she shows how such tragic loss of life can have history-changing consequences. From ancient Rome to the mid-twentieth century, historian Natasha Tidd takes readers on a global exploration behind the history of...

The story of the group of extraordinary eighteenth-century writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern. Named one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 • A Kirkus Best Book of 2019 "Damrosch brings the Club’s redoubtable personalities—the brilliant minds, the jousting...

A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch “The excellence of Leo Damrosch’s energetic biography is that it reveals so many other dimensions of this remarkable man: pioneering autobiographer, questioner of received ideas, traveller through high culture and low.”—Jonathan Bate, author of Radical Wordsworth Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a storied adventurer through the Enlightenment’s...

A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch “Fully succeeds in communicating that ‘vivid presentness,’ that ‘joyful eagerness’ for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova—and reading about him.”—Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal “A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites. . . . Another...

Bess of Hardwick was one of the most remarkable women of the Tudor era. Gently-born in reduced circumstances, she was married at 15, and when she was widowed at 16, she was still a virgin. At 19, she married a man more than twice her age, Sir William Cavendish, a senior auditor in King Henry VIII's Court of Augmentations. Responsible...

Female same-sex desire has been written out of history since, well, forever. Not anymore! From the first women’s football team in Britain to pirates and lesbian Avengers, via countless love letters and literary salons, A Short History of Queer Women sets the record straight on women who have loved other women through the ages. Examining social constructs of gender and...

An enjoyable, accessible exploration of the legacy of ancient Greece today, across our daily lives and all forms of popular culture. Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like "pandemic," a Freudian state of mind like the "Oedipus complex," or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese theme park, ancient Greek culture shapes the contours of...

DISCOVER A TALE OF UNIMAGINABLE ADVERSITY Twelve Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free-born man of colour who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South in 1841. His true tale of captivity, torture and abuse brings to life the unimaginable evils of slavery in a time when it was yet to be outlawed....

A detailed study of Tudor textiles, highlighting their extravagant beauty and their impact on the royal court, fashion, and taste At the Tudor Court, textiles were ubiquitous in decor and ceremony. Tapestries, embroideries, carpets, and hangings were more highly esteemed than paintings and other forms of decorative art. In 16th-century Europe, fine textiles were so costly that they were out...

The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilisation in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them. Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm...

The first truly global history of work, an upbeat assessment from the age of the hunter-gatherer to the present day. “Beginning in the hunting-and-gathering past, this long view of work shows how little has changed over millennia. Progressing through the rise of cities, wages and markets for labour, it traces a perennial cycle of injustice and resistance—and the age-old desire...

The story of humanity's evolving relationship with the natural world from pre-history to the present day Nature has long been the source of human curiosity and wonderment, and the inspiration for some of our deepest creative impulses. Yet, we are now witnessing its rapid impoverishment, even destruction, in much of our world. In this beautifully illustrated book, The Story of...

Winner of the Apollo Book of the Year Award 2024 Drawing is at the heart of human creativity. The most democratic form of art-making, it requires nothing more than a plain surface and a stub of pencil, a piece of chalk or an inky brush. Our prehistoric ancestors drew with natural pigments on the walls of caves, and every subsequent...

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian...

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian...

We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we're living in a long, violent Eurasian century. That giant, resource-rich landmass possesses the bulk of the global population, industrial might, and potential military power; it touches all four of the great oceans. Eurasia is a strategic prize without equal—which is why the world has...

The Curious History of the Heart by Vincent M. Figueredo is a Gold Award Winner of the 2024 Nonfiction Book Awards. It was also a runner-up in the 2024 History category at the San Francisco Book Festival and in the 2024 General Non-Fiction category at the New York Book Festival. For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to...

In this third edition of his widely acclaimed survey, historian Randall D. Law makes sense of the history of terrorism by examining it within its broad political, religious, and social contexts from the ancient world to the present day. In Terrorism: A History, Law reveals how the very definition of the word has changed, how the tactics and strategies of...

Now more than ever, our children need to learn about the people who live all around the world. This engaging guide to other lands weaves world history into a storybook format. Designed as a read-aloud project for parents and children to share, or for older readers to enjoy alone, Story of the World, Vol. 3 Revised Edition covers the major...

An incisive account of modern Spain, from the death of Franco to the Catalan referendum and beyond "Comprehensive and engaging."—Gideon Rachman, Financial Times Spain's transition to democracy after Franco's long dictatorship was widely hailed as a success, ushering in three decades of unprecedented progress and prosperity. Yet, over the past decade, its political consensus has been under severe strain. A...

An engaging and authoritative history of Scotland’s influence in the world and the world’s influence on Scotland, from the Thirty Years’ War to the present day. Scotland is one of the oldest nations in the world, yet by some, it is hardly counted as a nation at all. Neither a colony of England nor a fully equal partner in the...

The sequel and companion volume to C.A. Bayly's ground-breaking The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, this wide-ranging and sophisticated study explores global history since the First World War, offering a coherent, comparative overview of developments in politics, economics, and society at large. Remaking the Modern World 1900 - 2015 is written by one of the leading historians of his...