Global History

A firsthand, never-before-told account of the creation of OceanGate, the heartbreaking Titan tragedy and the supposed villain behind it all, Stockton Rush, as told by the only person who can: his cofounder and friend. In the summer of 2023, the entire world fixated on a single news story that captured every headline on every media outlet: the search and rescue...

A masterly synthesis of the history of the contemporary world, The World Since 1945 offers the ideal introduction to the events of the period between the end of the Second World War and the present day. P. M. H. Bell and Mark Gilbert balance a clear narrative with in-depth analysis to guide the reader through the aftermath of the Second...

A war is being waged against the Past. Whether it's toppling statues, decolonising the curriculum or erasing terms from our vocabulary, a cultural crusade is underway designed to render the past toxic. It is condemned as enemy territory and has become the target of venomous hate. What is at stake in provoking such a strong sense of societal shame towards...

An epic history of money, trade and development since 1933 This is the history of the institutions and individuals who have managed the global economy, from the World Monetary and Economic Conference in the wake of the Great Depression to the present, as leading nations tackle the fallout from Covid-19 and the threats of inflation, food security and climate change....

For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body. In cultures around the world, the heart—not the brain—was believed to be the location of intelligence, memory, emotion, and the soul. Over time, views on the purpose of the heart have transformed as people sought to understand the life forces it contains....

From New York Times bestselling author Larry Gonick and Davidson College biology professor David Wessner comes this comprehensive and humorous cartoon guide to topics in biologyDid you faint when your middle school science teacher asked you to dissect a frog Do you think DNA stands for “Don’t Know the Answer” Do you still cling to the belief that osmosis was...

Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale. In this book, Jeffrey D. Sachs, renowned economist and expert on sustainable development, turns to world history to shed light on how we can meet the challenges...

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,...

A fascinating, bottom-up exploration of contemporary Russian politics that sheds new light on why Putin’s grip on power is more fragile than we think. Putin vs. the People wrestles with perhaps the central conundrum of contemporary Russia: the endurance of support for Putin amid deepening disillusionment with the present and pessimism about the future.”—Daniel Beer, The Guardian What do ordinary...

Written by a Holocaust survivor whose family collected art, Plunder and Survival tells the stories of principal figures, events, and artworks that contribute to the intricate story of the ruthless Nazi attack on modern art and the art world's subsequent repositioning in America. Each chapter focuses on a selection of artworks, the individuals who owned or acquired them, and those...

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) made a pioneering and durably influential argument for women's equality. Emerging from the turbulent decade of the French Revolution, her vindication delivered a systematic critique of the treatment of women across time and place. Drawing on extensive experience teaching and writing about Wollstonecraft, Susan J. Wolfson offers new insight into...

The history the Chinese Communist Party has tried to erase: the dramatic political debates of the 1980s that could have put China on a path to greater openness. On a hike in Guangdong Province in January 1984, Deng Xiaoping was warned that his path was a steep and treacherous one. "Never turn back," the Chinese leader replied. That became a...

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year A BBC History Magazine Best Book of the Year "Excellent…A fascinating, authoritative account of the paths for China's future explored during a decade long buried by official, state-sponsored history." - Julia Lovell, Foreign Policy "A vivid and readable account…Exceptionally well-researched." - Andrew Nathan, Foreign Affairs "The definitive book on China in the...

In the shadow of the Cold War, whispers from the cosmos fuelled an unlikely alliance between the US and USSR. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or SETI) emerged as a foundational field of radio astronomy characterised by an unusual level of international collaboration—but SETI's use of signals intelligence technology also served military and governmental purposes. In this captivating new history...

Maladies of Empire has a captivating writing style, is exhaustively researched, and is persuasive in argumentation. Jim Downs has written a game-changing book." - Deirdre Cooper Owens, author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology "An eye-popping study of the history of infectious diseases, how they spread, and especially how they have been thwarted by experimentation...

Praise for the exhibition * The Telegraph * The Times * Daily Telegraph The Evening Standard "Plunge into the infinity pool of ancient Egyptian history with this dizzying array of artworks" - Waldemar Januszczak, Sunday Times Culture magazine Today the history of ancient Egypt is known around the world, recognisable in precious museum collections and countless retellings from popular culture....

The story of Roman Catholicism has never followed a singular path. In no time period has this been more true than over the last two centuries. Beginning with the French Revolution, extending to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and concluding with present-day crises, John T. McGreevy chronicles the dramatic upheavals and internal divisions shaping the most multicultural, multilingual,...

Why is today's Republican Party, which claims to be the defender of American values, so drawn to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the brazenly illiberal Victor Orban, who has crushed an independent judiciary and political dissent in Hungary? As Jacob Heilbrunn shows, the obvious affection conservatives display for foreign autocrats, though a striking and seemingly inexplicable fact of our...

From an acclaimed historian, a sweeping study of the past, present, and future of the Great Powers, revealing the new rules of global leadership. From the dawn of the modern era to the end of the Cold War, global history was defined by rivalries between great powers. In the West, this meant the struggle for supremacy in Europe and the...

This publication speaks to the people of our planet, Urantia, and offers an organised record of mankind's origin, history, and destiny. It elaborates on Deity; the organisation and administration of universes and the relation of the planet on which we live to the universe; the genesis and destiny of man and his relation to God and the teachings of Jesus...

Karl Marx wrote the most important critique of capitalism, Capital, in London during the 1860s, at the very moment that Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had shattered humanity’s conception of ourselves. In this path-breaking study, Joel Wainwright demonstrates that Capital was deeply influenced by Marx’s reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Marx’s thinking about history and nature changed,...

In this thought-provoking new work, historian Justin M. Jacobs challenges the widely accepted belief that much of Western museums' treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft. The account re-examines the allegedly immoral provenance of Western collections, advocating for a nuanced understanding of how artefacts reached Western shores. Jacobs examines the perspectives of Chinese, Egyptian, and other participants in the...

A fascinating journey through Western art from the 1910s to the 1960s, charting how artists wrestled with the headlong changes of a turbulent and conflict-ridden world From the chaos of the First World War to the ravages of the Second, from the Great Depression to the rise of consumer culture, artists we call “modern” faced the challenge of responding imaginatively...

A romantic illustrated journey through forty captivating gardens lost to time. All over the world, once-flourishing horticultural spaces have been abandoned and forgotten. From the once-crumbling grandeur of the Villa d'Este and the magic of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, to the sculptural surrealism of Las Pozas and the colourful rebirth of Le Jardin Majorelle, there are countless gardens around...

In our digital world, we owe much of our ability to communicate to the punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and other glyphs that hover on the edges of our keyboard. Without these symbols, it would be impossible to convey meaning—our words would run in endless unbroken lines of letters and numbers. These marks, which have their origins in the earliest written...

Scotland's largest city has always been one of the most vibrant, varied and fascinating places in the country. Glasgow: A New History begins with the river, for the Clyde made the city flourish. From prehistory to the Romans, to Mungo and the kingdom of Strathclyde, it's a rich, quirky and moving story that remembers the foundation of the burgh by...

A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era, selected as a Best Book of 2021 by Foreign Affairs. “A thoughtful and profound defence of liberal internationalism—both as a political philosophy and as a guide to future actions.”—Gideon Rachman, Financial Times “The crowning achievement of [Ikenberry’s] decades-long work explaining and defending the liberal international...

The National Trust looks after one of the largest and most significant holdings of fine-art and heritage objects in the world. As well as internationally famous works of art, the collections also contain many remarkable but far less familiar objects with fascinating stories to tell. This celebration of curiosities and inventions features forgotten gadgets, unusual works of art, humorous gifts,...

In the years after the First World War, Berlin was —as Vladimir Nabokov described it—a place 'of dangerous glamour and worldliness, of tawdry cynicism, where art and riot flourished side by side.' The Weimar Republic was Germany's postwar experiment with democracy, and a time of unprecedented cultural, intellectual, and artistic freedom. Berlin was at the cutting edge of quantum physics...

Google is typically thought of as a tech giant and the world's largest search engine, but it was also among the first tech companies to invest in news. After 9/11, the company recognised the economic and social value of up-to-the-minute information and began to incorporate news into its business. Google News—built on automation, algorithms, aggregation, and the unbundling and rebundling...

The early sixteenth century saw the rise of two Mediterranean empires—the Christian Habsburgs, based in Spain and Austria, and the Muslim Ottomans, centred in the Balkans and Anatolia—with strikingly similar ambitions. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) and Sultan Süleyman (1495–1566) each pursued grand universalist visions, seeking to unite Islam and Christendom under a universal monarchy that would resolve wars...

One of the most decisive and irreversible consequences of the Spanish conquest of the Americas was the alphabetic revolution which changed the forms of communication in indigenous societies. Writing, paper, and books arrived in the Americas with the conquistadors and were used as weapons by the Spanish to subjugate local populations and impose Christianity on them. The written word of...

An urgent call to action, a manifesto for justice, and a blueprint for a more equitable America... It's time we confront our history head-on, and Radical Reparations provides the necessary tools.” —Congresswoman Barbara Lee A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers...

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad reach, and what does it tell us about the histories of human rights and disability...

Throughout the history of the Western world, Jews have suffered various forms of exclusion, stigmatisation, and discrimination that have forced them always to be aware of their very particular situation. The Jews became a community under siege and, as Shlomo Sand argues, Judaism was shaped by the hostile gaze of Christian civilisation. While the forms of hostility endured by the...

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between...

It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war's death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of...

Examines how four intellectuals with ties to the French social sciences articulated a new primitivist sensibility between 1945 and 1975. We tend to associate primitivism with the nostalgic idealization of origins, often aimed at parts of the world that are viewed as closer to that idealized past than modern post-industrial society. Primitivist impulses still exist in popular culture, whether in...

Female kings have always been a rarity, an oddity, or an undesirable outcome. In almost all places on the globe a male ruler was preferred to a woman, with female inheritance vanishingly rare and frequently disputed. In spite of this, women have secured crowns - or fought for them - over several millennia. This scintillating book tell the story of...

First used as a drug capable of treating mental illnesses, then as a 'truth serum' by the CIA, Tripped reveals how the fortuitous discovery of LSD in April 1943 led to a mass exploitation of this promising hallucinogen.Using archival material, Norman Ohler brings to light the often misguided interaction between scientific research, state authorities and hedonistic drug culture that shaped...

From the wheel to gene editing, new ideas shape our world. In this dazzling, surprising and always entertaining book, bestselling author Andrew Leigh tells the story of innovation. Innovation shapes almost every corner of our lives, yet we rarely pause to notice it. Someone had to invent nails and wheelbarrows; alphabets and books; glass windows and windscreen wipers; tin cans...

From the bestselling author of The Secret History of the World, an exploration of the mystical forces that shape and protect usThe Sacred History is an account of the workings of the supernatural in history. It tells the epic story of angels, from Creation, to Evolution through to the operations of the supernatural in the modern world. This tale of...

'What a wonderful book!  The storytelling, the research, the deep love of her subject -- this must be the climax of Rappaport's long and illustrious career' Lucy Worsley   To Queen Victoria she was Aunt Julie; to Catherine the Great she was Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna, granddaughter-in-law. This is the story of Princess Juliane-Henriette-Ulrike of Saxe-Coburg, the Rebel Romanov.  Born in 1781...

The forgotten story of a decades-long international quest for a rare and coveted orchid, chronicling the botanists, plant hunters, and collectors who relentlessly pursued it at great human and environmental cost. In 1818, a curious root arrived in a small English village, tucked-seemingly by accident-in a packing case mailed from Brazil. The amateur botanist who cultivated it soon realized that...

A definitive year-by-year celebration of US history - from the Declaration of Independence to the nation's 250th anniversary Discover the extraordinary story of the United States of America - from its fight for independence to its 250th anniversary. This captivating and richly illustrated book takes you on a year-by-year journey through US history, starting with the signing of the Declaration...

The history of the most diverse insurrection the world has ever known. For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the western hemisphere, from the United States and the Caribbean to Mexico and Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom: from the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola to the eighteenth-century Maroon Wars...

A major new political history of the French Revolution In 1786, France's ancien régime was functioning as usual. Its alliance with the victorious American colonies had restored its diplomatic prestige, the economy seemed to be flourishing, and internal politics seemed quiet. But just a few short years later, the dynasty which had ruled France for over 800 years was swept...

Were the signs that Putin is a ruthless dictator there all along? How should we deal with President Xi of China? Given the world seems to be moving more and more in favour of authoritarian rule, this is the right moment to seek warnings, and lessons, from history.The Dictators includes elected and unelected dictators, wartime and peacetime dictators, those driven...

A marvellously engaging writer' - The Times From the winner of the 2022 Royal Society Science Book Prize, a thrilling and thought-provoking account of the rise and fall of humankind. For the first time in over ten millennia, the rate of human population growth is slowing down. The global population is forecast to begin declining in the second half of...

Secrets and maps are a match made in heaven. A Second World War military plan of a cave system covered with red stamps, a tatty hand-drawn treasure map marked with an 'X', or even your personal phone screen showing a precise 'blue dot' location. These maps contain confidential, coded, precious or private locational information and have, as a result, been...

An ambitious world history showing how space events have shaped life on Earth Our solar system is an extraordinary place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our own fragile blue planet. In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean,...

Golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth: Ancient Greece gave us democracy and the rule of the law; out of Abbasid Baghdad came algebra and modern medicine, and the Dutch Republic furnished us with Europe's greatest artistic movements. As such, each has unique lessons to teach us about the world...

'A wonderfully curious writer' OBSERVER'This is a book that reshapes our story of global human geography' PROFESSOR DANNY DORLING Mountains, meridians, rivers and borders; these are some of the features that carve up the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far less set in stone than we might believe and, over time, we have become...

Bring the richness, elegance, and charm of the Victorian era into 2027 with this calendar of lush, vibrant collages. Cynthia Hart's Victoriana Wall Calendar 2027 offers a stylish year: Each month's design is carefully curated by expert designer Cynthia Hart. Delightful collages adorn each month, including roses and valentines in February, lush summer blooms in June, a nautical scene in...

Through 70 stunning infographics and maps, this exciting and timely book looks at the borders that define our current world. There are borders that are easily crossed and borders that are entirely impassable; there are visible borders—sometimes demarcated by fences, walls, flags, and posts—and invisible borders—not seen on a physical map and oftentimes restrictive of access to targeted populations. There...

Explore how music has changed our world through 50 pieces across classical, folk and world traditions with BBC presenter Tom Service, in this official Radio 3 compendium. Music transports us and defines us. As a form of expression, it has been passed down through oral tradition, musical notation and recordings in a chain of connection that spans the globe, across...

A panoramic history of the Muslim world from the age of the Prophet Muhammad 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...

DK's best-selling guide to the "big ideas" of history - now fully revised and updated. Why did democracy emerge in ancient Greece? How did Spain conquer South and Central America? What caused the fall of the Berlin Wall? Explaining the key events in world history in a clear and simple way, The History Book answers these questions and more besides,...

To read most histories of art, you might be forgiven for supposing that great artists are superhuman, and the knowledge of different movements, periods and styles is essential to truly appreciate art. It's time to look at art in a new way. The Power of Art delves into the stories behind remarkable acts of creation in fifteen global cities at...

Surveying forty years of news photography at Reuters, this publication captures the very best of photojournalism, bringing together pictures and texts to tell the stories behind iconic news imagery. Founded in London in 1851, Reuters' mission is to present to the world the news that matters. Its photographers deliver over 1,500,000 photographs every year, priding themselves on being first on...

Judged by contemporaries to be a 'perfidious rogue', Sir George Downing rose to prominence during the English Civil War as Oliver Cromwell's chief of military intelligence. In the Interregnum, he proved himself a double-dealer who bribed and blackmailed his way to diplomatic success across Europe, pioneering the practice of judicial kidnapping and starting two major wars in the process, before...

In 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean enclosed half the world's population. Japan's onslaught into China that year unleashed a tidal wave of events that fundamentally transformed this region and killed about twenty-five million people. This extraordinary World War II narrative vividly portrays the battles across this entire region and links those struggles...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Tianjin was the diplomatic capital of the Middle Kingdom, where foreign consuls met Chinese dignitaries, and a hub of commerce and culture. Yet in the eyes of foreigners, the city remained provincial. After the tumult of the Boxer Rebellion, however, Tianjin transformed, when a little-known international political project turned it...

The Secret Team, L. Fletcher Prouty's exposé of the CIA's brutal methods of maintaining national security during the Cold War, was first published in the 1970s. However, virtually all copies of the book disappeared upon distribution, having been purchased en masse by shady "private buyers." Certainly, Prouty's allegations—such as how the U-2 Crisis of 1960 was fixed to sabotage the...

Confessing to "Familiarity with the Devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens, was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbours. In 1662, Ann Cole was "taken with very strange Fits" and fuelled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events in Salem...

The story of the most audacious serial heist in the history of Australia's museums - and the British gentleman adventurer who pulled it off and got away with it - in a scientific true crime caper stretching around the globe. In January 1947, a chance discovery rocked the world of natural science: over 3,000 rare and precious specimens of butterflies...

Incredible stories from those who thrived in the Wild West. The "mountain men" were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The lifestyle of the mountain men could be harsh, existing...

The explosive history of weaponised mail over hundreds of years. This book unfolds the gripping history of weaponised mail, offering the first-ever comprehensive exploration of this sinister phenomenon. Spanning two centuries, Murder by Mail unveils the history of postal bombs, describing the evolution of both explosives and the postal services that facilitated their deadly use. From an eighteenth-century incident involving...

The never-before-told story of the epic battle of wills between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill, as they debated the repayment of the enormous sums loaned by America to Great Britain during World War I. A Financial Times Best History Book of the Summer "A gripping yarn." —The Economist "An engaging narrative.” —The Wall Street Journal Andrew Mellon, one of the...

How Russia Got Big accounts for Russia's changing physical scope over some seven centuries. Even people who know little about Russia know that it is big. This concise book tells the story of how it became so. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in the early 14th century, Paul W. Werth recounts the construction of the world's largest country—from...

A Times History Book of the Year 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...

Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. But many have vanished from our collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without...

Rome is more than just a city; it's an enduring idea, a symbol of identity, power, and legitimacy that has shaped the course of history for over 1,500 years. From ancient emperors to modern world leaders, Rome's influence in building the world we know today is undeniable. In All Roads Lead to Rome, author and historian Rhiannon Garth Jones embarks...

This volume examines the tumultuous changes that have occurred and are still occurring in the aftermath of European colonisation of the globe from 1492 to 1947. Ranging widely over the major themes, regions, theories, and practices of postcolonial study today, the volume presents original essays by the leading proponents of postcolonial study in the Americas, Europe, India, Africa, East and...

The first global history of the epic early days of the iron railway Railways, in simple wooden or stone form, have existed since prehistory. But from the 1750s onward, the introduction of iron rails led to a dramatic technological evolution—one that would truly change the world. In this rich new history, David Gwyn tells the neglected story of the early...

Which countries were under a dictatorship? Where did the Beatles perform live outside the UK? Where were atomic bombs tested? Which nations boycotted the 1966 World Cup? What was the route of the Hippy Trail? The 1960s was a momentous decade whose legacy is colourful and enduring. Here is a book that maps those years—through their culture, their politics, their...

For the first time ever, Roland Huntford presents each man's full account of the race to the South Pole in their own words. In 1910, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen set sail for Antarctica, each from his own starting point, and the epic race for the South Pole was on. For the first time, Scott's unedited diaries run alongside...

Travellers have always experimented with disguise while observing the disguises of others. Each of the chapters in Mobility and Masks illustrates the strategies of concealment in the experience of travel: A seventeenth-century German aristocrat discovers new freedom as she travels incognito. Jesuits write home from China in the eighteenth century about how costume changes serve their mission. A Chinese opera...

I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it, this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you keep it with you and measure all other light by it. If you live away from it, then step...

A brilliant, paradigm-shifting global survey of how human history has reshaped the planet, and vice versa over the last 500 years. In this paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of the expansion of human freedom and...