Historical Archives

Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions

Queens of a Fallen World tells a story of betrayal, love, and ambition in the ancient world as seen through a woman’s eyes. Historian Kate Cooper introduces us to four women whose hopes and plans collided in Augustine’s early adulthood: his mother, Monnica of Thagaste; his lover; his fiancée; and Justina, the troubled empress of ancient Rome. Drawing upon their depictions in the Confessions, Cooper skilfully reconstructs their lives against the backdrop of their fourth-century society. […Learn More]

Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen

The first modern biography of one of the most influential yet long-neglected rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra.

“A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens.” —Emma Southon […Learn More]

Demetrius: Sacker of Cities

The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad by Barnaby Rogerson

The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad: And the Roots of the Sunni-Shia Schism

The Prophet Muhammad taught the word of God to the Arabs. Within a generation of his death, his followers – as vivid a cast of heroic individuals as history has known – had exploded out of Arabia to confront the two great superpowers of the seventh-century and establish Islam and a new civilization. […Learn More]

Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth-Century Europe

A pioneering work of Ottoman Turkish literature, Prisoner of the Infidels brings the seventeenth-century memoir of Osman Agha of Timişoara—slave, adventurer, and diplomat—into English for the first time. The sweeping story of Osman’s life begins upon his capture and subsequent enslavement during the Ottoman–Habsburg Wars. Adrift in a landscape far from his home and traded from one master to another, Osman tells a tale of indignation and betrayal but also of wonder and resilience, punctuated with queer trysts, back-alley knife fights, and elaborate ruses to regain his freedom. […Learn More]

Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice

A “powerful” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century’s greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America. […Learn More]

The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II

Ian Buruma’s spellbinding account of three near-mythic figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler’s masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between. […Learn More]

After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

From Helen Rappaport, the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes After the Romanovs, the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light.
[…Learn More]

American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune

The gripping biography of Jay Gould, the greatest 19th-century robber barons, whose brilliance, greed, and bare-knuckled tactics made him richer than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first financial reforms. […Learn More]

The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s

Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters―such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner―are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs. […Learn More]