Allen Lane History Books
'One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years' The Times For years KGB operative Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life hiding top-secret material from Russian secret service archives beneath his family dacha. When he was exfiltrated to the West he took with him what the FBI called 'the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source'. This extraordinary bestselling book is the result. 'Co-authored in a brilliant partnership by Christopher Andrew and the renegade Soviet archivist himself ... This is a truly global exposé of major KGB penetrations throughout the Western world' The Times 'This tale of malevolent spymasters, intricate tradecraft and cold-eyed betrayal reads like a cold war novel' Time 'Sensational ... the most informed and detailed study of Soviet subversive intrigues worldwide' Spectator 'The most comprehensive addition to the subject ever published' Sunday Telegraph
What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete: what the fascists did, rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up “enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, to Germany’s fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others, and explores whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged. "A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." – The Economist The Anatomy of Fascism will have a lasting impact on our understanding of modern European history, just as Paxton’s classic Vichy France redefined our vision of World War II. Based on a lifetime of research, this compelling and important book transforms our knowledge of fascism–“the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.”
" Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books, including The Diversity of Life, The Ants, On Human Nature, and Sociobiology. The grace and precision with which he writes of seemingly complex topics has earned him two Pulitzer prizes, and the admiration of scientists and general readers around the world. In Search of Nature presents for the first time a collection of the seminal short writings of Edward O. Wilson, addressing in brief and eminently readable form the themes that have actively engaged this remarkable intellect throughout his career. ""The central theme of the essays is that wild nature and human nature are closely interwoven. I argue that the only way to make complete sense of either is by examining both closely and together as products of evolution.... Human behavior is seen not just as the product of recorded history, ten thousand years recent, but of deep history, the combined genetic and cultural changes that created humanity over hundreds of thousands of years. We need this longer view, I believe, not only to understand our species, but more firmly to secure its future. The book is composed of three sections. ""Animal Nature, Human Nature"" ranges from serpents to sharks to sociality in ants. It asks how and why the universal aversion to snakes might have evolved in humans and primates, marvels at the diversity of the world's 350 species of shark and how their adaptive success has affected our conception of the world, and admonishes us to ""be careful of little lives""-to see in the construction of insect social systems ""another grand experiment in evolution for our delectation. ""The Patterns of Nature"" probes at the foundation of sociobiology, asking what is the underlying genetic basis of social behavior, and what that means for the future of the human species. Beginning with altruism and aggression, the two poles of behavior, these essays describe how science, like art, adds new information to the accumulated wisdom, establishing new patterns of explanation and inquiry. In ""The Bird of Paradise: The Hunter and the Poet,"" the analytic and synthetic impulses-exemplified in the sciences and the humanities-are called upon to give full definition to the human prospect. ""Nature's Abundance"" celebrates biodiversity, explaining its fundamental importance to the continued existence of humanity. From ""The Little Things That Run the World""-invertebrate species that make life possible for everyone and everything else-to the emergent belief of many scientists in the human species' possible innate affinity for other living things, known as biophilia, Wilson sets forth clear and compelling reasons why humans should concern themselves with species loss. ""Is Humanity Suicidal?"" compares the environmentalist's view with that of the exemptionalist, who holds that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, our species must have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. Not without optimism, Wilson concludes that we are smart enough and have time enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe of civilization-threatening dimensions-if we are willing both to redirect our science and technology and to reconsider our self-image as a species. In Search of Nature is a lively and accessible introduction to the writings of one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. Imaginatively illustrated by noted artist Laura Southworth, it is a book all readers will treasure."
Prague is at the core of everything both wonderful and terrible in Western history, but few people truly understand this city's unique culture. In Prague in Black and Gold , Peter Demetz strips away sentimentalities and distortions and shows how Czechs, Germans, Italians, and Jews have lived and worked together for over a thousand years. .
" [How the Mind Works ] marks out the territory on which the coming century's debate about human nature will be held."―Oliver Morton, The New Yorker In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct . He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review , "No other science writer makes me laugh so much. . . . [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him." The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997 Featured in Time magazine, the New York Times Magazine , The New Yorker , Nature , Science, Lingua Franca , and Science Times Front-page reviews in the Washington Post Book World , the Boston Globe Book Section , and the San Diego Union Book Review Illustrations
Cover has some edge wear. Pages have highlighting. Ships fast from Northern California.
We aren't very strong, nor very fast, we have insufficient body hair to keep us warm and dry, and we will never eat bananas with our feet. But like our chimpanzee cousins, we, the naked apes, have evolved to flourish in our surroundings--a cultural environment largely of our own creation. For the human race, the critical evolution of the past million years has been the evolution of our minds. Yet psychology, the very science that purports to understand us, has long been deeply ambivalent about Darwin's unsettling discoveries. In an accessible, level-headed overview, Henry Plotkin describes the new rapprochement called 'evolutionary psychology.' He examines how such a powerful theory as Darwinism could have been disregarded by much academic psychology and shows why the relationship between the two must be readdressed. The theory and data of evolutionary biology and animal behavior can illuminate many of our most basic mental processes and activities: language learning, perception, social understanding, and most controversially, culture and the sharing of knowledge and beliefs. Ranging from the nature-nurture question, which has bedeviled philosophers and scientists for thousands of years, to recent debates about the mind's structure, Evolution in Mind vividly demonstrates how an evolutionary perspective helps us understand what we are, and how we got that way.
Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful book -- based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he gave at the University of Washington in 1963 -- shows us this other side of Feynman, as he expounds on the inherent conflict between science and religion, people's distrust of politicians, and our universal fascination with flying saucers, faith healing, and mental telepathy. Here we see Feynman in top form: nearly bursting into a Navajo war chant, then pressing for an overhaul of the English language (if you want to know why Johnny can't read, just look at the spelling of "friend"); and, finally, ruminating on the death of his first wife from tuberculosis. This is quintessential Feynman -- reflective, amusing, and ever enlightening.
Richard Breitman's Official Secrets is an important work based on newly declassified archives. As defeat loomed over the Third Reich in 1945, its officials tried to destroy the physical and documentary evidence about the Nazis' monstrous crimes, about their murder of millions. Great Britain already had some of the evidence, however, for its intelligence services had for years been intercepting, decoding, and analyzing German police radio messages and SS ones, too. Yet these important papers were sealed away as "Most Secret," "Never to Be Removed from This Office"-and they have only now reappeared. Integrating this new evidence with other sources, Richard Breitman reconsiders how Germany's leaders brought about the Holocaust-and when-and reassesses Britain's and America's suppression of information about the Nazi killings. His absorbing account of the tensions between the two powers and the consequences of keeping this information secret for so long shows us the danger of continued government secrecy, which serves none of us well, and the failure to punish many known war criminals.
Lourdes was at the very center of 19th century debates on religion, science, and medicine. Both the Church and secularists championed the "miracle" town as crucial in shaping how society should think about the mind, body, and spirit. Since the "visions" of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 transformed the quiet Pyrenean town into an international tourist and pilgrimage destination, it has been a site for controversy. In her well-crafted and carefully researched book, Harris deftly places Lourdes and its attendant spiritual movement firmly at the center of French history and shows its significance in the country’s development.
Although the young Edward VI's death in 1553 led to resounding defeat for his Protestant allies, his reign has a significance out of all proportion to its brief six-year span. For during its course England's rulers let loose an explosive form of Christianity within the realm. In this lavishly illustrated book, MacCulloch underlines the significance of Edward's turbulent and neglected reign. As well as the young king's life and beliefs he takes a fresh look at the ruthless politicians who jostled for position around him and explores the strange afterlife of Edward's attempt at the religious transformation of his kingdom. In this MacCulloch traces a connection through the civil wars of the 17th century up to the present day.
Charles Freeman 's The Greek Achievement traces the entire course of ancient Greek history across thousands of years--from the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations of the Bronze Age through the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. This brilliant account celebrates the incredible range of Greek achievement: the architectural marvels of the Athenian Acropolis; the birth of drama and the timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripides , and Sophocles ; Homer 's epics; the philosophical revolutions of Plato and Aristotle ; and the conquests of Alexander the Great . Lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps, The Greek Achievement paints a sweeping panorama of the ancient Greeks' world and provides a rich, contemporary overview of their enduring contribution to world civilization.
William Ewart Gladstone was perhaps the greatest colossus of the Victorian Age. Along with his formidable rival, Benjamin Disraeli, he dominated Britain's political scene from the moment of his appointment as chancellor of the exchequer in Aberdeen's famous coalition ministry until his resignation as prime minister in March 1894, four years before his death. In the intervening years, he held the office of prime minister four times.With this volume, Richard Shannon completes his magisterial biography of Gladstone. Tracing Gladstone's career from his rise to eminence in 1865 until his death in 1898, Shannon documents his emergence as the dominant personality in the Liberal Party, his activities as a statesman, and his decades-long battle with Disraeli.In his analysis, Shannon pays particular attention to Gladstone's attempts to integrate his religion with his career. Profoundly influenced by his Anglican Christianity, Gladstone approached his causes with a missionary fervor, Shannon argues. This tenacity is perhaps best illustrated by Gladstone's unyielding support of Irish home rule--a position so at odds with Liberal policies that it caused many Liberals to ally themselves with the Conservatives, thereby instigating the decline of Gladstone's own party.
An invigorating and original account of the evolution of one of the most important ideas of our century--psychoanalysis.
Until now Rembrandt has eluded his biographers. The scarcity of documentary evidence on the one hand and the enormous scale of his artistic achievement on the other have left us at once dazzled and bereft. Now, after more than twenty years of work, Simon Schama has managed to combine an absolute mastery of the painter's life and times with an unprecedented sympathy for Rembrandt's character as it found both expression and transformation in his art. The result is enthralling as biography and as history, but above all it amounts to the first reconstruction of Rembrandt's genius that does full justice to its subject.
Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the topic of several books. But such works leave us What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of the key figures in the art world of Nazi Germany." "Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals who, like Faust, that German archetype, chose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces.
"One of those rare books that’s both sweeping and specific, scholarly and readable…What makes the book stand out is its wealth of historical detail." ―Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker The history of the twentieth century is most often told through its world wars, the rise and fall of communism, or its economic upheavals. In his startling book, J. R. McNeill gives us our first general account of what may prove to be the most significant dimension of the twentieth century: its environmental history. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are a part. Based on exhaustive research, McNeill's story―a compelling blend of anecdotes, data, and shrewd analysis―never preaches: it is our definitive account. This is a volume in The Global Century Series (general editor, Paul Kennedy). 40 b/w photographs, 15 maps
In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.
"At the Bottom of the Garden is a history of fairies from the ancient world to the present. Steeped in folklore and fantasy, it is a rich and diverse account of the part that fairies and fairy stories have played in culture and society." "Dianne Purkiss explains in this engrossing history that ancient fairies were born of fear: fear of the dark, of death, and of other great rites of passage, birth and sex. To understand the importance of these early fairies to pre-industrial peoples, we need to recover that sense of dread."--BOOK JACKET.
For generations the traditional focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but here makes an overwhelming case for consideringBritain the true home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to twentieth-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world.
Incorporating the work of some of Scotland's leading historians, this definitive history of the country chronicles some eight thousand years, from the Neolithic period to the present day, covering the people and events that have shaped Scotland and furnishing essays on such topics as archaeology, economics, science, religion, literature, and other disciplines. Original.
While the trial of Hitler's fallen elite at Nuremberg has been thoroughly documented, the interval between the Nazis' capture in May and June 1945 and the start of the actual trial in late November has until now remained shrouded in shadow. With Interrogations, acclaimed historian Richard Overy opens a new window into the Third Reich, providing an intimate glimpse of the savage dictatorship in its death throes. More than thirty transcripts of the interrogations are reproduced here for the first time, allowing us to hear the voices of the newly captured "Hitler gang"-including Göring, Speer, and Hess-as they squirmed under the Allies' glare. Interrogations is the stark and disturbing history of defeat; it lays bare as never before the human weaknesses that made the Third Reich possible.
A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality , The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." -- Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
“A savory, fascinating story of absolute rule, one that not only reveals a great deal about China’s turbulent past but also suggests where some of the more durable reflexes of China’s current leaders have their roots. . . . A detective yarn and a picaresque tale.” (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times ) Shortly before noon on October 28, 1728, General Yue Zhongqi, the most powerful military and civilian official in northwest China, was en route to his headquarters. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a stranger ran toward Yue and passed him an envelope—an envelope containing details of a treasonous plot to overthrow the Manchu government. This thrilling story of a conspiracy against the Qing dynasty in 1728 is a captivating tale of intrigue and a fascinating exploration of what it means to rule and be ruled. Once again, Jonathan Spence has created a vivid portrait of the rich culture that surrounds a most dramatic moment in Chinese history.
"Ideas tumble out of Porter like wonders from some scholarly horn of plenty." ―Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic An eminently readable, entertaining romp through the history of our vain and valiant efforts to heal ourselves. Mankind's battle to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible is our oldest, most universal struggle. With his characteristic wit and vastly informed historical scope, Roy Porter examines the war fought between disease and doctors on the battleground of the flesh from ancient times to the present. He explores the many ingenious ways in which we have attempted to overcome disease through the ages: the changing role of doctors, from ancient healers, apothecaries, and blood-letters to today's professionals; the array of drugs, from Ayurvedic remedies to the launch of Viagra; the advances in surgery, from amputations performed by barbers without anesthetic to today's sophisticated transplants; and the transformation of hospitals from Christian places of convalescence to modern medical powerhouses. Cleverly illustrated with historic line drawings, the chronic ailments of humanity provide vivid anecdotes for Porter's enlightening story of medicine's efforts to prevail over a formidable and ever-changing adversary.
On October 23, 1852, Professor Augustus De Morgan wrote a letter to a colleague, unaware that he was launching one of the most famous mathematical conundrums in history--one that would confound thousands of puzzlers for more than a century. This is the amazing story of how the "map problem" was solved. The problem posed in the letter came from a former student: What is the least possible number of colors needed to fill in any map (real or invented) so that neighboring counties are always colored differently? This deceptively simple question was of minimal interest to cartographers, who saw little need to limit how many colors they used. But the problem set off a frenzy among professional mathematicians and amateur problem solvers, among them Lewis Carroll, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer, the Bishop of London, a man who set his watch only once a year, a California traffic cop, and a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon coloring maps. In their pursuit of the solution, mathematicians painted maps on doughnuts and horseshoes and played with patterned soccer balls and the great rhombicuboctahedron. It would be more than one hundred years (and countless colored maps) later before the result was finally established. Even then, difficult questions remained, and the intricate solution--which involved no fewer than 1,200 hours of computer time--was greeted with as much dismay as enthusiasm. Providing a clear and elegant explanation of the problem and the proof, Robin Wilson tells how a seemingly innocuous question baffled great minds and stimulated exciting mathematics with far-flung applications. This is the entertaining story of those who failed to prove, and those who ultimately did prove, that four colors do indeed suffice to color any map.
In this immensely readable history that couldn’t be more timely, award-winning historian Richard Fletcher chronicles the relationship between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation. With lucidity and sound scholarship, Fletcher demonstrates that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when the Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other’s religion from the beginning as fundamentally different and suspect. Eschewing moral judgments and easy generalizations, The Cross and the Crescent allows readers to draw their own conclusions and explore the implications for the present day.
Physical description: xxii, 506p. : ill. (some col.),maps,ports. ; 24 cm. Notes: Bibliography: p438-442. Subjects: Cook, James 1728-1779 — Travel — Polynesia.
'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again for the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English.
"Shanghai in the wake of the First World War was one of the world's most dynamic, brutal and exciting cities, rivalled only by New York and Berlin. Its waterfront crammed with ocean freighters, gunboats, junks and myriad coastal craft, it was the focus for trade between China and the world, creating, for Chinese and foreigner alike, immense if precarious opportunities. Shanghai's great panorama of nightclubs, opium dens, brothels, racetracks and casinos was intertwined with this industrial powerhouse to create a uniquely seductive but also terrifying metropolis." "Keeping order in such a place was never easy, but for the British-run administration in the 1920s and 1930s life became increasingly desperate. Threatened both from within by gangsters and from without by Chinese warlords and the Japanese military, the Shanghai miracle was in reality a very fragile thing." Into this maelstrom stepped a tough and resourceful ex-veteran Englishman to join the Shanghai police. It is his story, told in part through his rediscovered photo-albums and letters, that Robert Bickers tells here. Aggressive, bullying, racist, self-aggrandizing, Maurice Tinkler was in many ways a typical Briton-on-the-make in an empire world that gave authority to its citizens purely through their skin colour. But Tinkler was also very much more than this - for all his bravado, he could not know that the history that packed him off to Shanghai could just as readily crush him.
The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 were momentous ones in the history of Britain. In 1066, England was conquered for the last time. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was destroyed and and the English became a subject race, dominated by a Norman-French dynasty and aristocracy. This book shows how the English domination of the kingdom was by no means a foregone conclusion. The struggle for mastery in the book's title is in reality the struggle for different masteries within Great Britain. The book weaves together the histories of England, Scotland and Wales in a new way and argues that all three, in their different fashions, were competing for domination
In the summer of 1914 Europe exploded into a frenzy of mass violence. The war that followed had global repercussions, destroying four empires and costing millions of lives. Even the victorious countries were scarred for a generation, and we still today remain within the conflict's shadow. In this major new analysis, published ninety years after the First World War began, David Stevenson re-examines the causes, course, and impact of this 'war to end war', placing it in the context of its era and exposing its underlying dynamics. His book provides a wide-ranging international history, drawing on insights from the latest research. It offers compelling answers to the key questions about how this terrible struggle questions that remain disturbingly relevant for our own time.
Offering a dazzling overview of a turbulent century, The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century explores the dramatic events and underlying trends that made the twentieth century the most transformative in human history. Despite two devastating World Wars and the traumatic rise and fall of communism, wealth has increased significantly alongside a four-fold leap in population, women's lives have been transformed, America has assumed undisputed political and cultural leadership, and China is now clearly awaiting its moment, J. M. Robert's masterly overview, now updated to the present day, brings all of this and more into focus.
Every summer for vast numbers of holidaying British there is only one question that is reverted to over and over again: why are France and the French so odd? How can our near neighbour, who we share so much with and admire in so many ways, remain resolutely mysterious and, not infrequently, irritating? Rod Kedward has spent his entire adult life immersed in the study of France. He knows Paris intimately but is as much at home in the regions and the remote back country, la France profonde. He is fascinated by the great and often terrible dramas of modern France - the two cataclysmic wars, the Algerian disaster, the events of 1968 - but is equally obsessed with the special worlds of French family life, the workplace, immigration and leisure time. La Vie en bleu is the result of Kedward's obsessions - a book that is both definitive and completely fascinating.
With Mussolini s Italy , R.J.B. Bosworththe foremost scholar on the subject writing in Englishvividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth centurys most notorious political experiments. Il Duces Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitlers first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italys darkest hour.
Ireland's Easter Rising of 1916 is one of the handful of modern historical events that instantly created its own mythology and changed millions of lives forever. Charles Townshend's remarkable new book vividly re-creates this extraordinary time when a powerful narrative was born and Ireland was launched into a new world.
To an extraordinary extent, everyone in Britain still lives under the shadow of the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. It was a massive, brutal, and terrifying event, which completely changed the governments of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and which was only achieved through overwhelming violence. Revolution brilliantly captures the sense that this was a great turning point in Britain's history, but also shows how severe a price was paid to achieve this.
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 clear, energetic narrative history." — The Washington Post Astonishing in its scope and erudition, this is the magnum opus that Niall Ferguson's numerous acclaimed works have been leading up to. In it, he grapples with perhaps the most challenging questions of modern history: Why was the twentieth century history's bloodiest by far? Why did unprecedented material progress go hand in hand with total war and genocide? His quest for new answers takes him from the walls of Nanjing to the bloody beaches of Normandy, from the economics of ethnic cleansing to the politics of imperial decline and fall. The result, as brilliantly written as it is vital, is a great historian's masterwork.
This extraordinary book is a vivid, highly original account of the creation of a new Asia after the Second World War - an unstoppable wave of nationalism that swept the British Empire aside. It tells the definitive story of how India, Pakistan, Burma and Malaysia came into existence and how British interference in Vietnam and Indonesia fatally shaped those countries' futures.
In 1940 the world was on a knife-edge. The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe’s Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history.
The greatness of Italy's culture and way of life have had a powerful attraction for many generations of visitors. This has created an overwhelming sense that Italy is a fundamentally benign and easy going country. The Force of Destiny, Christopher Duggan's immensely enjoyable new book, lays waste to this idea. While sharing everyone's enthusiasm for Italy as a place, he strongly distinguishes this from its political role over the past two centuries, which has been both vicious and ruinous for Europe as a whole.
A glorious and conclusive chronicle of the wars waged by one of the most polarizing figures in military history Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a new standard on the subject, this sweeping, boldly written history of the Napoleonic era reveals its central protagonist as a man driven by an insatiable desire for fame, and determined to push matters to extremes. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, it offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. As it expertly moves through conflicts from Russia to Spain, Napoleon's Wars proves to be history writing equal to its subject—grand and ambitious—that will reframe the way this tumultuous era is understood.
Spain has had a long history of exiles. Since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, wave after wave of its people have been driven from the country. The Disinherited paints a vivid picture of Spains diverse exiles, from Muslims, Jews and Protestants to Liberals, Socialists and Communists, artists, writers and musicians. Kamen describes the ways in which many of these expelled citizens have shaped Spanish culture or impoverished it by leaving and enriched their adopted homes through their creative responses to exile and to encounters with new worlds, Picasso, Mir, Dali and Buuel among them. Henry Kamens compelling and sympathetic account tells the story of their incalculable impact on the world.