Book cover of Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945 by Halik Kochanski
Eastern Europe

Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945

In every country that fell to the Third Reich during the Second World War, from France in the west to parts of the Soviet Union in the east, a resistance movement against Nazi domination emerged. And every country that endured occupation created its own fiercely nationalist account of the role of homegrown resistance in its eventual liberation. Halik Kochanski’s panoramic, prodigiously researched work is a monumental achievement: the first book to strip these disparate national histories of myth and nostalgia and to integrate them into a definitive chronicle of the underground war against the Nazis. […Learn More]

Book cover of African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History by Hakim Adi
Africa

African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History

A major new history of Britain that transforms our understanding of this country’s past

‘I’ve waited so long so read a comprehensively researched book about Black history on this island. This is it: a journey of discovery and a truly exciting and important work’ Zainab Abbas […Learn More]

Book cover of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
Biography & Autobiography

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire. […Learn More]

Book cover of Crown & Sceptre: A New History of the British Monarchy, from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II by Tracy Borman
Biography & Autobiography

Crown & Sceptre: A New History of the British Monarchy, from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II

Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England’s various kingdoms, forty-one kings and queens have sat on Britain’s throne. “Shining examples of royal power and majesty alongside a rogue’s gallery of weak, lazy, or evil monarchs,” as Tracy Borman describes them in her sparkling chronicle, Crown & Sceptre. Ironically, during very few of these 955 years has the throne’s occupant been unambiguously English—whether Norman French, the Welsh-born Tudors, the Scottish Stuarts, and the Hanoverians and their German successors to the present day.
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Book cover of Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth by Iain MacGregor
Europe

Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth

In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II by Iain MacGregor
Eastern Europe

The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II 

To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II were sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ hard-won victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the Volga River. To Russians, it is a pivotal landmark of their nation’s losses, with more than two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded, or captured during the bitter fighting from September 1942 to February 1943. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal, relentless house-to-house fighting. […Learn More]

Book cover of Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World by John Keay
Asia

Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World

History has not been kind to Himalaya. Empires have collided here, cultures have clashed. Buddhist India claimed it from the south, Islam put down roots in its western approaches, Mongols and Manchus rode in from the north, and, from the east, China continues to absorb what it prefers not to call Tibet. Hunters have decimated its wildlife and mountaineers have bagged its peaks. Today, machinery gouges minerals out of its rock. […Learn More]