WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2008'The world's most controversial classicist debunks our movie-style myths about the Roman town with meticulous scholarship and propulsive energy' Laura Silverman, Daily MailThe ruins of Pompeii, buried by an explosion of Vesuvius in 79 CE, offer the best evidence we have of everyday life in the Roman empire. This remarkable book rises to the challenge of making sense of those remains, as well as exploding many myths: the very date of the eruption, probab...

Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They were the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. They fought the largest and costliest war in all history.

One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the French Revolution ever produced.

It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great 'empire of liberty.' In the first new one-volume history in two decades, David Reynolds takes Jefferson's phrase as a key to the saga of America - helping unlock both its grandeur and its paradoxes. He examines how the anti-empire of 1776 became the greatest superpower the world has seen, how the country that offered liberty and opportunity on a scale unmatched in Europe nevertheless founded its prosperity on the labour of bl...

This is the most comprehensive history of the Netherlands available in the English language. It surveys Dutch history from the 16th century, when the nation took shape as a geographical, administrative and political entity, right through to the Netherlands of today. Examining domestic politics and wider international contexts, as well as economic and cultural history, Friso Wielenga provides a varied and in-depth investigation that will lead to a rich understanding of the country's past.

The ...

Yuval Noah Harari's bestselling phenomenon now in a beautifully packaged new special edition. Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Historians not only have knowledge of history, but by writing about it and engaging with other historians from the past and present, they make history themselves. This companion offers young historians clear guidelines for the different phases of historical research; how do you get a good historical question? How do you engage with the literature? How do you work with sources from the past, from archives to imagery and objects, art, or landscapes? What is the influence of digitalisation of th...

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction •

Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who in this presidential election year, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven "nations" that continue to shape North America

According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, ea...

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, "in the...

Wat hebben de klimaatcrisis, kunstmatige intelligentie, pandemieën, genetische modificatie en kernenergie met elkaar gemeen? Het zijn allemaal voorbeelden van het feit dat menselijk handelen een steeds grotere impact heeft op een steeds langere termijn, met mogelijk onomkeerbare en desastreuze gevolgen. Maar terwijl toekomstgerichte politiek harder nodig is dan ooit, raakt onze democratie juist steeds meer in de greep van de waan van de dag en de korte termijn. We schuiven problemen vooruit,...