From the author of End TimesIn War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin uses his expertise in evolutionary biology to offer a bold new theory about the course of world history.Turchin argues that the key to the formation of an empire is a society’s capacity...

Across the humanities and the social sciences, disciplinary boundaries have come into question as scholars have acknowledged their common preoccupations with cultural phenomena ranging from rituals and ceremonies to texts and discourse. Literary critics,...

If the Wright brothers’ 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence—a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • New York Times Bestseller • Over Two Million Copies Sold “One of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation” (Gregg Easterbrook, New York Times), Guns, Germs, and Steel presents a...

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world. Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the...

The best-selling author of Why the West Rules—for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who...

An accessible synthesis of the prescient best seller exploring seventeenth-century catastrophe and the impact of climate change First published in 2013, Geoffrey Parker's prize-winning best seller Global Crisis analyzes the unprecedented...

Building on A People’s History of the United States, this radical world history captures the broad sweep of human history from the perspective of struggling classes. An “indispensable volume” on class and capitalism throughout the ages—for readers...

Why would two poets invent a fake writer, complete with a fake oeuvre and compelling life story, and then submit their fabrication to a literary magazine? Why might a biographer claim to have interviewed Howard Hughes and collaborated on the reclusive...

“EMINENTLY PROVOCATIVE AND READABLE.”—THE WALL STREET JOURNALSir Alistair Horne has been a close observer of war and history for more than fifty years and in this wise and masterly work, he revisits six battles of the past century and examines the...

In this overview of the Baltic region from the Vikings to the European Union, Michael North presents the sea and the lands that surround it as a Nordic Mediterranean, a maritime zone of shared influence, with its own distinct patterns of trade, cultural...

Nineteen forty-six is the year that would signal the beginning of the Cold War, the end of the British Empire, and the beginning of the rivalry between the United States and the USSR. Victor Sebestyen reveals the year’s events by chronologically framing...

Named a Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement, The Times, Spectator, and The EconomistThe English first materialized as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. From the...

A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovationWhether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs—and their innovations—have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise...

Saints and spies, pirates and philosophers, artists and intellectuals: they all criss-crossed the grey North Sea in the so-called “dark ages,” the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Europe’s mastery over the oceans. Now the...

A New York Times Bestseller"A beautiful blend of history and prose and proves again Mr. Toll’s mastery of the naval-war narrative." ―Wall Street JournalThis masterful history encompasses the heart of the Pacific War―the period between mid-1942 and...

What is the history of knowledge? This engaging and accessible introduction explains what is distinctive about the new field of the history of knowledge (or, as some scholars say, ‘knowledges in the plural’) and how it differs from the history of...

The origin of capitalism and modern industrialism—and, not unrelated, the birthplace of Marxism—modern Europe provided the perfect conditions for a great number of political revolutions. From the monarchical terror of the Middle Ages to the mangled...

The twentieth century was the most brutal in human history, featuring a litany of shameful events that includes the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Stalinist era, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. This book looks at the politics of our times and the roots of...

Inspired by his research into the reality of General Wolfe's death at Quebec, Schama is drawn towards the case of a gruesome murder in the family of Wolfe's chronicler, Francis Parkman. What Schama reveals, however, is a history of stories.