A TELEGRAPH BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 ‘A highly imaginative and thought-provoking way of exploring the personality of a man who, like him or loathe him, left an indelible mark on our age’ ADAM ZAMOYSKI

Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history The witch came to prominence-and often a painful death-in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake. This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible per...

A rich, wide-ranging history of ignorance in all its forms, from antiquity to the present day

In Jared Diamond's follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Diamond is also the author of Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions a...

In this fully revised and updated third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower, and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Focusing their answers through the historical legacies--Confucian thought, Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen...

This classic work, back in print for the first time in over a decade, questions the public's harsh perception of the artist, while at the same time gently poking fun at the artists' own, often inflated self-image.

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.

King of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most important figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe. This book presents a fresh interpretation of this contentious figure, focusing on how his thirty-year reign from 1888 to 1918 affected Germany, and the rest of Europe.

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, Anne describes not only the daily frustrations of living in such close quarters, but also her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up.