Like his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter examines the true history of the discord between Israel and Palestine with surprising results Though the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict have traditionally been traced to the British Mandate (1920-1948) that ended...

A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush.”In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural...

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages...

If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, which side would you want to win? When the last British governor of Virginia declared that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the king would be emancipated, tens of thousands...

This is a broad and ambitious study of the entire history of humanity that takes as its point of departure Marx's theory of social evolution. Professor Diakonoff's theory of world history differs from Marx's in a number of ways. First, he has expanded...

Take a tour through the Mediterranean’s largest island in this first and only history of Sicily for general readers—perfect for armchair travelers, historians, and anyone planning their next Italian vacation.The emigration of people from Sicily often...

This lively and dramatic book brings roaring to life the grand sweep of 5,000 years of history in the cradle of civilization.A wonderfully illustrated account of the civilizations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean, The Middle...

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower"Even those who have read widely in 20th-century history will find fresh, surprising details." —The Boston Globe"A fascinating read, thanks to Ferguson's gifts as a writer of...

InCities, the acclaimed historian John Reader takes us on a journey of the city—from its earliest example in the Ancient Near East to today’s teeming centers of compressed existence, such as Mumbai and Tokyo. Cities are home to half the planet’s...

“Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written.” —The Boston Globe“Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject.” —The New York TimesThe “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York...

"Remarkable.… Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us." —Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker Bringing light to the shadows of history through a "rich weave of citation and archival evidence" (Publishers Weekly), scholar A...

Salonica, located in northern Greece, was long a fascinating crossroads metropolis of different religions and ethnicities, where Egyptian merchants, Spanish Jews, Orthodox Greeks, Sufi dervishes, and Albanian brigands all rubbed shoulders. Tensions...

Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is the first history of the world's great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the...

Richard Rubenstein writes of the holocaust, why it happened, why it happened when it did, and why it may happen again and again.

Since its first publication more than eighty years ago, The Decline of the West has ranked as one of the most widely read and talked about books of our time. A sweeping account of Western culture by a historian of legendary intellect, it is an...

While the rest of eighteenth century Europe was embroiled in revolution and unrest, Britain embarked on an era of comparative calm and stability. Two attempts by the Stuarts to reclaim the throne were easily put down, not through the power of the British...

A single theme is pursued in this book - the trade between peoples of differing cultures through world history. Extending from the ancient world to the coming of the commercial revolution, Professor Curtin's discussion encompasses a broad and diverse...

Describes the eighteenth-century invention by Wolfgang von Kempeden of the Turk, a mechanical man fashioned of wood, powered by clockwork, and capable of playing chess, examining the machine's remarkable career in light of the industrial revolution and...