BEST BOOKS 2023: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * TLS

Do you know what is at stake in Ukraine? Urgent, compelling reading from the author of Chernobyl on the defining conflict of our times

On 24 February 2022, Russia stunned the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on the family and friends who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the outbreak of the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plo...

The prequel to Frank McDonough's bestselling Hitler Years series, covering the dramatic period of German history that led to the rise of Hitler in 1933.

Established in the wake of Germany's catastrophic defeat in the First World War, the Weimar Republic ushered in widespread social reform, vibrant culture and the most democratic conditions the German people had ever lived under. At its beginning in 1919, it was a regime that held hope for democracy, stability and prosperity in German...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD FLANAGANIn this fascinating journey Claudio Magris, whose knowledge is encyclopaedic and whose curiosity limitless, guides his reader from the source of the Danube in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea.

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment.

Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-c...

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...

It was believed that in 1491, the year before Columbus landed, the Americas were a near-pristine wilderness inhabited by small roaming bands of indigenous people. Here, Charles Mann provides a new, fascinating and iconoclastic account of the Americas before Columbus.