Non Fiction - History

During the 1530s, rumours of a potentially revolutionary theory of how the heavens worked emanating from a small city in Poland began to spread throughout Europe. The architect of this theory was a Polish cleric named Nicolaus Copernicus. In around 1514 Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory, in which he placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of our universe, with the planets, including the Earth, revolving about it. Titled his Commentariolus, it circulated among a very few astron... read more

In Bligh, the story of the most notorious of all Pacific explorers is told through a new lens as a significant episode in the history of the world, not simply of the West. Award-winning anthropologist Anne Salmond recounts the triumphs and disasters of William Bligh's life and career in a riveting narrative that for the first time portrays the Pacific islanders as key players.
From 1777, Salmond charts Bligh's three Pacific voyages - with Captain James Cook in the Resolution, on board the Bounty and as commander of the Provid... read more

The acknowledged master of the all-encompassing single volume of history demonstrates the profound impact the Elizabethan age has had on contemporary Britain. With all the panoramic sweep of his bestselling study of The Victorians, A. N. Wilson relates the exhilarating story of the Elizabethan Age. It was a time of exceptional creativity, wealth creation and political expansion. It was also a period of English history more remarkable than any other for the technicolour personalities of its leading participants. Apart from the compl... read more

In October 1942, a panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town...Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'. The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitle... read more

'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.' These notorious words, spoken by Churchill in 1942, encapsulate his image as an imperial die-hard, implacably opposed to colonial freedom. A reputation that has prevailed, and which Churchill willingly embraced to further his policies. Yet, as a youthful minister at the Colonial Office before World War I, his political opponents had seen him as a Little Englander and a danger to the Empire. Placing Churchill in the contex... read more

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying battles and wars than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did these normal activities take place but at home. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. With the irresistibl... read more

Aphrodite's Island is a bold new account of the European discovery of Tahiti, the Pacific island of mythic status in Western imaginings about sexuality, the exotic, and the nobility or bestiality of 'savages'. In this groundbreaking book, Anne Salmond takes readers to the centre of these societies' shared history to furnish rich insights into Tahitian perceptions of the visitors while illuminating the full extent of European fascination with Tahiti. As she discerns the impact and meaning of the European effect on the island, she de... read more

Know It All is a complete course on general knowledge, bound in one volume, and featuring intelligence quizzes that allow you to monitor and measure your progress in knowledge-attainment. Know It All does not contain trivia or useless information. All of the content has been thoroughly researched and written by a team of experts to convey the basic elements of knowledge across a variety of disciplines and subjects.

On 8 September 1941, eleven short weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege would not be lifted for two and a half years and during the 872 days of blockade and bombardment as many as two million Soviet lives would be lost. Had the city fallen, the history of the Second World War - and of the twentieth century - would have been very different. Leningrad is a gripping narrative history interwoven with personal stories - immediate accounts of ... read more

The definitive biography of the world's most important body of water - the Atlantic.
One hundred and ninety million years ago, the shifting of two of the world's tectonic plates led to the creation of an immense chasm. This giant gash in the flanks of the planet slowly opened up and eventually evolved into the most important and most travelled ocean in our world. In this utterly original biography, Simon Winchester explores the life of the Atlantic; its birth, its relationship with mankind, and what lies in store for... read more

The history of a family through 264 objects - set against a turbulent century - from an acclaimed writer and potter. 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: Potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined... The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Ch... read more

Christianity, one of the world's great religions, has had an incalculable impact on human history. This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organisation and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society. Diarmaid MacCulloch ranges from Palestine in the first century to India in the third, from Damascus to China in the seventh century and from San Francisco to Korea in the twentieth. He is ... read more

After the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, which ended the ancient rule of the Abyssinian monarchy, Ryszard Kapuscinski travelled to Ethiopia and sought out surviving courtiers to tell their stories. Here, their eloquent and ironic voices depict the lavish, corrupt world they had known - from the rituals, hierarchies and intrigues at court to the vagaries of a ruler who maintained absolute power over his impoverished people. They describe his inexorable downfall as the Ethiopian military approach, strange omens appear in the s... read more

A family's recently discovered correspondence provides the inspiration for this fascinating and deeply moving account of Jewish family life before, during and after the Holocaust. Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey reveal how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and dispersed over three continents. The family's unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decisions of when, if and to where they should emigrate. The ... read more

Well known for his histories of Norman Sicily, Venice, the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean, John Julius Norwich has now turned his attention to the oldest continuing institution in the world, tracing the papal line down the centuries from St Peter himself - traditionally (though by no means historically) the first pope - to the present Benedict XVI. Of the 280-odd holders of the supreme office, some have unques-tionably been saints; others have wallowed in unspeakable iniquity. One was said to have been a woman - and an Engl... read more

Unearthing London reveals the almost-forgotten ritual landscape which lies hidden beneath the streets of the modern capital. It is the city nobody knows, a vast and intricate network of hilltop shrines, tracks, sacred rivers, mounds, ditches, enclosures and manmade hills, all well over 2000 years old. This prehistoric landscape, moulded and shaped by early men and women, determined the position of landmarks such as St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. However, it has not been completely obliterated by th... read more

The transit of Venus across the sun in June 2012 will be the last chance in our lifetime to see this rare planetary alignment that has been so important in history. Rich in historical detail and cutting edge science, along with practical information on how and when to view the transit, Transit of Venus is the must-have companion to this extraordinary astronomical event. From Johannes Keplers first prediction of a transit of Venus in 1631, to Captain Cooks 1769 transit expedition to Tahiti (which led to the European settlement of Au... read more