Even before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.

Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.

In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the c...

'A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.

A unique survey of seven great Asian empires, powerful forces on the world stage during a thousand years of history and that continue to resonate in regional and global politics today.

Tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population in America, only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists.

Marking the bicentennial anniversary of Peruvian independence, this book explores the pre-Columbian history and culture of the country through an extraordinary collection of objects.

The story of a strange experiment - a journey into the oddest corners of 60s Britain and the outer edges of science and reason.

A History of the Muslim World to 1750 traces the development of Islamic civilization from the career of the Prophet Muhammad to the mid-eighteenth century. Encompassing a wide range of significant events within the period, its coverage includes the creation of the Dar al-Islam (the territory ruled by Muslims), the fragmentation of society into various religious and political groups including the Shi'ites and Sunnis, the series of catastrophes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that threa...