Alex Danchev

Alex Dekker served as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces 'Green Berets' for nearly 20 years, first with 5th Special Forces Group and then as a special operations team member assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command. He has deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations worldwide, and has attended multiple advanced tactical and technical schools within the U.S. Special Operations community and interagency. Alex has traveled to dozens of countries for work and personal adventures and has spent years living abroad. He is an avid student of history who has participated as a volunteer in numerous archaeological digs, is an Arabic speaker, and holds a Masters in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. When not traveling, Alex lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Savannah, a former CIA Operations Officer, their children, and their German Shepherd Donovan.

Alex Dekker

Alex Dimitrov is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize from the American Poetry Review and a Pushcart Prize and is the author of Begging For It (2013), Together And By Yourselves (2017), and Love and Other Poems (2021). His work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Poetry, and more. Formerly, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets where he edited the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. From 2009-2013, he founded and ran Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York. Currently, he teaches creative writing at NYU where he is Writer in Residence.

Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dingwall-Main

Alex Duval

Alex Edelman

Alex Edmans

Alex Evans is Campaigns Director at Avaaz.org, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), and has nearly twenty years’ experience in climate and development policy. Alex has worked as Special Adviser to two UK Secretaries of State for International Development (Hilary Benn and Valerie Amos), as an expert on climate change in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and with think tanks including Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. He has also worked as a consultant on futures and foreign policy for organizations from Oxfam to the US National Intelligence Council. 
Alex lives in North Yorkshire and is married with two children.

Alex Evans

Alex Ferguson was born and brought up in Govan, Glasgow. He has always been a controversial figure, never far from the limelight, from the time he led an apprentices’ strike before entering full-time football. As a player with a reputation as uncompromising centre-forward his clubs included Glasgow Rangers, Dunfermline and Falkirk, and he became a spokesman for the player’s union. His first appointment as manager was with East Stirling, from where he moved to Love Street, where St Mirren’s crowds under his dynamic leadership rose from 3,000 to 12,000. He joined the Pittodrie set-up as manager in 1978.

Alex Ferguson

Alex Fryer

Alex Games

Alex Garland was born in London in 1970. He is the author of two novels, The Beach, The Tesseract and an illustrated novella, The Coma, in collaboration with his father. He has also written screenplays for films including 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. In 2015, Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina.

Alex Garland

Alex George

Dr Alex George was the UK’s Mental Health Ambassador for children and young people from 2021 until early 2025, and he currently hosts the Stompcast podcast. Dr Alex’s first children’s book A BETTER DAY was a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller, won a British Book Award and sold 42,000 copies through TCM. Dr Alex previously worked for the NHS as an A&amp;E doctor and is now passionate about helping to equip everyone – especially children and young people – with the tools needed to live a full, productive and meaningful life.

Alex Gordon

Alex Grecian worked for an ad agency before returning to writing fiction full-time and raising his son. Alex is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed comic-book series Proof, and the bestselling Scotland Yard Murder Squad series. He lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and son.

Alex Grecian

Alex Gutteridge

Alex Halberstadt is the author of the award-winning Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and The Paris Review. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He works and lives in New York.

Alex Halberstadt

Alex Haley

Dr Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a former senior research scientist on Google's Ethical AI team. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry and a proponent of community-based uses of technology.

Alex Hanna

Alex Hannaford

Alex Hely-Hutchinson

Professor Alex Hill is the co-founder and Director of The Centre for High Performance – a collaboration between the University of Kingston, Duke Corporate Education, London Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford – which is dedicated to helping high-performing organizations develop a stronger and more robust economy, society and environment. The Centre has worked with organizations in sectors ranging from the arts and education to sport, technology and the military. 
 
He is also a Professor at Kingston University (UK), Educator at Duke Corporate Education (US), and Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (UK), Gordon Institute of Business Science (South Africa), The Academy of National Economy (Russia) and KEDGE Management School (France). 
 
He has written a number of books, published articles in leading academic journals such as the Harvard Business Review, advised the UK Government on educational policy, appeared on BBC Newsnight, presented at the Global Economics and Skills Forum and has written for The Times and Schools Week.

Alex Hill

Alex Hoffler and Stacey O’Gorman’s motto is ‘Follow your dream’. Just a couple of year ago Alex and Stacey quit their 9 to 5 jobs and began their Meringue Girls journey. Now they have a bakery HQ in Broadway Market with a staff of eight, which sells to Selfridges, Fortnum &amp; Mason, Recipease and Harvey Nicholls, as well as fashion events, weddings and their weekly market stall. They run masterclasses rated by the Evening Standard as one of the best in London. They have had a huge media and social media response including numerous TV appearance and over 80,000 Instagram followers. They are in talks to open a franchise in Dubai. 
 
They also do weekly food styling for various publications including the Guardian. They live in east London. Alex has a new baby, and Stacey recently got married.

Alex Hoffler

Alex Holt is the Global Head of the multi-billion-dollar Technology, Media and Telecoms practice at KPMG. He leads a large team who work with all the major organisations across the sector on everything from multi-billion M&amp;A deals through to tax, audit and management consulting. As well as leading the TMT sector globally, Alex is also the Global Lead Partner for some of the largest tech companies in the world. 
 
 Alex also serves on the Board of the anti-poverty charity JobTrain.

Alex Holt

Alex Horne 
noun 
1. comedian, writer, gambler, taskmaster, podcaster, birdwatcher, potential neologist and father.

Alex Horne

Alex Hughes is an online recipe creator who is committed to making reaching your weight goals not only delicious but fun. All her recipes are comforting, low-calorie and will help you feel full. She can be found doing a little dance in her kitchen (the recipes taste that good) at @alexskitchenbangers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Alex Hughes

Alex James is a writer, farmer, and the bass player with Blur. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and five children.

Alex James

Alex Kadis is half-British, half-Greek, and grew up in Leyton and Walthamstow, East London. She studied English Literature at Goldsmiths University before embarking on a music journalism career. She was Features Editor at Smash Hits in its heyday (RIP) and has also written for various newspapers and magazines, including Sunday Times Style and Q Magazine. She then went into artist management and now works as a consultant in the music industry. Alex suffers from delusions of grandeur and still believes she will, one day, headline Wembley Stadium.

Alex Kadis

Alex Kantrowitz is a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News and one of the ten most cited technology reporters in the world. His work has been referenced by dozens of major publications, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to Sports Illustrated. He is the founder of the tech publication and podcast Big Technology, which focuses on analysing tech giants. Kantrowitz is a graduate of Cornell University's College of Industrial and Labor Relations. This is his first book.

Alex Kantrowitz

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Matthew De Abaitua

Could there be another way of life? Can I survive with less stuff? Should I run for the hills? 
 
These are all good questions that people have asked before, throughout history, and which have inspired people to set up camp. But now camping is part of the drive for self-sufficiency, a reaction against mass tourism, a chance to connect with the land, to experience a community, to leave no trace . . . 
 
From packing to pitching, with hikes into the deep history of the subject and encounters with the great campers and camping movements of the past, this is a witty and philosophical blend of 'how to', history and personal anecdotes - a must for every camper.

The Art of Camping

The History and Practice of Sleeping Under the Stars

Niall Ferguson

The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece.

The War of the World

History's Age of Hatred

Walter Lord

Julian Fellowes

Brian Lavery

'There is no danger that Titanic will sink. The boat is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the passengers.' - Phillip Franklin, White Star Line Vice-President 
 
On April 15th, 1912, Titanic, the world's largest passenger ship, sank after colliding with an iceberg, claiming more than 1,500 lives. Walter Lord's classic bestselling history of the voyage, the wreck and the aftermath is a tour de force of detailed investigation and the upstairs/downstairs divide. A Night to Remember provides a vivid, gripping and deeply personal account of the 'unsinkable' Titanic's descent. 
 
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY JULIAN FELLOWES

A Night to Remember

The Classic Bestselling Account of the Sinking of the Titanic

Is America the new world empire? Presidents from Lincoln to Bush may have denied it but, as Niall Ferguson's brilliant and provocative book shows, the US is in many ways the greatest imperial power of all time. What's more, it always has been an empire, expanding westwards throughout the nineteenth century and rising to global dominance in the twentieth. But is today's American colossus really equipped to play Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on its shoulders? The United States, Ferguson reveals, is an empire running on empty, weakened by chronic defecits of money, manpower and political will. When the New Rome falls, he warns, its collapse may come from within. 
 
'One of the timeliest and most topical books to have appeared in recent years' Literary Review 
 
'Yet another tour de force from a writer who displays all his usual gifts of forceful polemic, unconventional intelligence and elegant prose ... guaranteed to spark fierce debate' Irish Times 
 
'A bravura exploration of why Americans are not cut out to be imperialists but nonetheless have an empire. Vigorous, substantive, and worrying' Timothy Garton Ash

Colossus

The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Evgeny Morozov

'Offers a rare note of wisdom and common sense, on an issue overwhelmed by digital utopians' Malcolm Gladwell 
 
We were promised that the internet would set us free. From the Middle East's 'twitter revolution' to Facebook activism, technology would spread democracy and bring us together as never before. 
 
We couldn't have been more wrong. In The Net Delusion Evgeny Morozov shows why internet freedom s an illusion. Not only that - in many cases the net is actually helping oppressive regimes to stifle dissent, track dissidents and keep people pacified, with companies such as Google and Amazon helping them do it. 
 
This book shows that free information doesn't mean free people - and that, right now, everyone's liberty is at stake.

The Net Delusion

How Not to Liberate The World

Molly Weir

'Poverty is a very exacting teacher and I had been taught well' 
 
The post-war urban jungle of the Glasgow tenements was the setting for Molly Weir's childhood. From sharing a pull-out bed in her mother's tiny kitchen to running in terror from the fever van, it was an upbringing that was cemented in hardship. Hunger, cold and sickness was an everyday reality and complaining was not an option. 
 
Despite the crippling poverty, there was a vivacity to the tenements that kept spirits high. Whether Molly was brushing the hair of her wizened neighbour Mrs MacKay, running to Jimmy's chip shop for a ha'penny of crimps or dancing at the annual fair, there wasn't a moment to spare for self-pity. Molly never let it get her down as she and the other urchins knew how to make do with nothing. 
 
And at the centre of her world was her fearsome but loving Grannie, whose tough, independent spirit taught Molly to rise above her pitiful surroundings and achieve her dreams.

Shoes Were For Sunday

Martin Jacques

China will replace the United States as the world's dominant power. In so doing, it will not become more western but the world will become more Chinese. 
 
Jacques argues that we cannot understand China in western terms but only through its own history and culture. To this end, he introduces a powerful set of ideas including China as a civilization-state, the tributary system, the Chinese idea of race, a very different concept of the state, and the principle of contested modernity. 
 
First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - 'When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of a New Global Order' has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and has been the subject of an immensely popular TED talk. In the three years since the first edition was published, the book has transformed the debate about China worldwide and proved remarkably prescient. 
 
In this greatly expanded and fully updated paperback edition, with nearly three-hundred pages of new material backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China's ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, thereby transforming the world as we know it.

When China Rules The World

The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World [Greatly updated and expanded]

Virginia Nicholson

We tend to see the Second World War as a man's war, featuring Spitfire crews and brave deeds on the Normandy beaches. But in conditions of "Total War" millions of women - in the Services and on the Home Front - demonstrated that they were cleverer, more broad-minded and altogether more complex than anyone had ever guessed. 
 
In Millions Like Us Virginia Nicholson tells the story of the women's war, through a host of individual women's experiences. She tells how they loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared; how they re-made their world in peacetime. And how they would never be the same again ...

Millions Like Us

Women's Lives in the Second World War

Stephanie Williams

'May God forgive us for our sorry deeds and for our glorious intentions' 
 
Who were the men governing the Empire in the nineteenth century? 
How were they chosen and controlled? Were they sane or mad? 
And why did they do it? 
 
From Fiji to the Falkland Islands, from Malaysia to Australia and South Africa, from Lagos to Ottawa, ordinary British men and women, with no training, were dispatched to strange places, among strange people and faced unimaginable conditions. Some started wars. Others fought disease, injustice and slavery. Many died or went mad. Running the Show, drawing on vast unpublished sources, reveals the day-today lives, griefs and triumphs of governors at the height of the British Empire as they struggled to make sense of their charges and, frequently, themselves.

Running the Show

The Extraordinary Stories of the Men who Governed the British Empire

Robert Bickers

In the early nineteenth century China remained almost untouched by British and European powers - but as new technology started to change this balance, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain their independence? 
 
This important and compelling book explains the roots of China's complex relationship with the West by illuminating a dramatic, colourful and sometimes shocking period of the country's history.

The Scramble for China

Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914

Robert Holland

Blue-Water Empire is Robert Holland's magnificent narrative of Britain's military and cultural ties with the Mediterranean Sea, in the style of the epic naval histories of N. A. M. Rodger. 
 
Britain has been a major presence in the Mediterranean from the Battle of the Nile to the end of empire, as both a military and a colonising force on the islands and coastlines of the sea. Robert Holland traces the fascinating story of that presence, from its legacies in culture, language and law to the Mediterranean's own influence on Britain. 
 
Evoking the conflicts and contrasts between British and local societies caught up in dramatic events, as well as their mutual resilience under pressure, Blue Water Empire charts with vigour, flair and clarity the British experience in the Mediterranean in the age of empire. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'An important corrective to current historical amnesia ... the definitive account of Anglo-Mediterranean history for years to come' Amanda Foreman, New Statesman 
 
'A rich and readable account of the British in the Middle Sea ... As Holland's learned, lucid and enjoyable work makes clear, many British politicians saw the Mediterranean as the pre-eminent global strategic arena, representing the key to victory in Europe and Asia' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 
 
'This is an important subject, and it has never before been drawn together into a single coherent narrative ... Blue-Water Empire puts the land, not the sea, at the heart of the story' Literary Review 
 
'Robert Holland's masterly history of the Mediterranean is a pleasure to read. Blue-Water Empire shows how Britain's mastery of the Middle Sea shaped the modern world, whilst reminding us how profoundly the Mediterranean has influenced the British' Simon Ball (author of The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean, 1935-1949) 
 
'Lively and absorbing' Philip Mansel, Spectator 
 
About the author: 
 
Robert Holland is one of the world's leading historians of the Mediterranean and the author of Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-59, and (with Diana Markides) The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1850-1960. He holds professorial positions at the Centre for Hellenic Studies in King's College London and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in the same University.

Blue-Water Empire

The British in the Mediterranean since 1800

John Stubbs

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAVALIERS BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR 
 
'Dashing and daring, colourful, subtle and provocative . . . stuffed almost to bursting-point with character and incident. Feasting on poems, diaries, plays, masques, letters and biographies, Reprobates introduces us to . . . a flamboyant parade of chancers, dreamers, turncoats, heroes, idiots and hedonists who grab the reader's shoulders and force a drink on us as if in some dim-lit, tallow-smoked tavern of the 1630s' Independent

Reprobates

The Cavaliers of the English Civil War

Lizzie Collingham

In World War Two, 19 million people died in the conflicts across the globe. Yet in those same years, more than 20 million died from starvation and malnutrition. In The Taste of War Lizzie Collingham shows how food - and its lack - was central to the war's causes and continuation. She explores how starvation was often a deliberate governmental policy, and reveals how the necessity of feeding whole countries lead to Pearl Harbour, Germany's invasion of Russia, and the Holocaust itself.

The Taste of War

World War Two and the Battle for Food

Ron Chernow

The celebrated Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of America. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life, he carries the reader through Washington's troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian Wars, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention and his magnificent performance as America's first president. 
 
Despite the reverence his name inspires Washington remains a waxwork to many readers, worthy but dull, a laconic man of remarkable self-control. But in this groundbreaking work Chernow revises forever the uninspiring stereotype. He portrays Washington as a strapping, celebrated horseman, elegant dancer and tireless hunter, who guarded his emotional life with intriguing ferocity. Not only did Washington gather around himself the foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, he orchestrated their actions to help realise his vision for the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and establish the office of the presidency. 
 
Ron Chernow takes us on a page-turning journey through all the formative events of America's founding. This is a magisterial work from one of America's foremost writers and historians.

Washington

A Life

Hugh Thomas

Charles V, Emperor of Europe and the New World, is the central figure in the second volume of Hugh Thomas's great history of the Spanish Empire. It begins with the return of the remnants of Magellan's expedition around the world in 1522 and ends with Charles's death in 1558. In the decades between, the Spaniards conquer Guatemala, Yucatan, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru and Chile, and control the banks of the mighty River Plate; the audacious conquistador Francisco de Orellana journeys down the Amazon, Cabeza de Vaca walks from Florida to Mexico, Juan Vazquez Coronado pioneers into New Mexico and Hernando de Soto vainly pursues worldly riches in Florida, Mississippi and Georgia. 
 
Hugh Thomas writes vividly, conveying the conquerors' almost disbelieving sense of what they were achieving. The discovery and subjugation of so many native peoples raised enormous controversy within Spain about how they should be treated, a debate Thomas explores perceptively, with an eye for resonances have lasted centuries. Hugh Thomas brings alive one of the most extraordinary and influential moments in High Renaissance and world history.

The Golden Age

The Spanish Empire of Charles V

C. J. Chivers

The AK-47, or 'Kalashnikov', is the most abundant and efficient firearm on earth. It is so light it can be used by children. It has transformed the way we fight wars, and its story is the chilling story of modern warfare. 
 
C. J. Chivers's extraordinary new book tells an alternative history of the world as seen through these terrible weapons. He traces them back to their origins in the early experiments of Gatling and Maxim, and examines the first appearance of the machine-gun. The quest for ever greater firepower and mobility culminated in the AK-47 at the beginning of the Cold War, a weapon so remarkable that, over sixty years after its invention and having broken free of all state control, it has become central to civil wars all over the world.

The Gun

The Story of the AK-47

Albert Jack

This is a book for everyone who has ever wondered why pubs should be called The Cross Keys, The Dew Drop Inn or The Hope and Anchor. You'll be glad to know that there are very good - strange and memorable - reasons behind them all. 
 
After much research about (and in) pubs, Albert Jack brings together the stories behind pub names to reveal how they offer fascinating and subversive insights on our history, customs, attitudes and jokes in just the same way that nursery rhymes do. The Royal Oak, for instance, commemorates the tree that hid Charles II from Cromwell's forces after his defeat at Worcester; The Bag of Nails is a corruption of the Bacchanals, the crazed followers of Bacchus, the god of wine and drunkenness; The Cat and the Fiddle a mangling of Catherine La Fidele and a guarded gesture of support for Henry VIII's first, Catholic, wife Catherine of Aragon; plus many, many more. 
 
Here too are even more facts about everything from ghosts to drinking songs to the rules of cribbage and shove ha'penny, showing that, ultimately, the story of pub history is really the story of our own popular history.

The Old Dog and Duck

The Secret Meanings of Pub Names

Richard Miles

Across the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, awe-inspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape - vast palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues of ancient gods, carvings praising the eternal power of long-forgotten dynasties. These ruins - the remainder of thousands of years of human civilization - are both inspirational in their grandeur, and terrible in that their once teeming centres of population were all ultimately destroyed and abandoned. 
 
In this major book, Richard Miles recreates these extraordinary cities, ranging from the Euphrates to the Roman Empire, to understand the roots of human civilization. His challenge is to make us understand that the cities which define culture, religion and economic success and which are humanity's greatest invention, have always had a cruel edge to them, building systems that have provided both amazing opportunities and back-breaking hardship. 
 
This exhilarating book is both a pleasure to read and a challenge to us all to think about our past - and about the present.

Ancient Worlds

The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization

Jared Diamond

From groundbreaking writer and thinker Jared Diamond comes the epic, visionary book, now in a revised edition with a new afterword, on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations - and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? 
 
Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Collapse also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.

Collapse

How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Lawrence Potter

This is a life raft for anyone who finds themselves floundering amidst a sea of ten-second soundbites, wishing they had a better grasp of complexities of world politics and global issues. Clear, concise language sets the record straight on a diverse range of topics as Lawrence Potter presents answers to fifty-seven questions about the world we live in, stretching from "What is jihad?" to "is fair trade a good thing?" and "Is there still a war in Chechnya?" . Important information including the latest research on environmental issues and the history behind current events worldwide is presented in enough detail to be useful without overwhelming readers with too much making for a balanced, informed reference guide. 
 
Also covering... What is the problem with plastic bags? What did Sadaam do to the Kurds? What is the difference between a sunni and a shia and is it possible that global warming is not taking place in a thoroughly updated new edition complete with a new chapter explaining the problem of Afghanistan

This May Help You Understand the World

Simon Price

Peter Thonemann

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman 
 
To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a 'classical Europe', using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. 
 
As this consistently fresh and surprising new book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past filled with great leaders and writers, emigrations and battles. Indeed, much of the reason we know so much about the classical past is the obsessive importance it held for so many generations of Greeks and Romans, who interpreted and reinterpreted their changing casts of heroes and villains. Figures such as Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar loom large in our imaginations today, but they were themselves fascinated by what had preceded them. 
 
The Birth of Classical Europe is therefore both an authoritative history, and also a fascinating attempt to show how our own changing values and interests have shaped our feelings about an era which is by some measures very remote but by others startlingly close.

The Birth of Classical Europe

A History from Troy to Augustine

Joel Mokyr

Why did Western countries become so much wealthier than the rest of the world? What explains the huge rise in incomes during the Industrial Revolution - and why did Britain lead the way? 
 
In the years between the Glorious Revolution and the Great Exhibition, the British economy was transformed. Joel Mokyr's landmark history offers a wholly new perspective for understanding Britain's extraordinary rise during the Industrial Revolution, showing how intellectual, rather than material, forces were the driving force behind it. While empire, trade, resources and other factors all played a part, above all it was the creative ferment of the Enlightenment - with its belief in progress and scientific advancement - that affected the economic behaviour of thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs and artisans, taking Britain into the modern era. 
 
Linking ideas and beliefs to the heart of modern economic growth, The Enlightened Economy will transform the way we view the Industrial Revolution.

The Enlightened Economy

Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1850

What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? How would England look if there had been no Cromwell? What would the world be like if Communism had never collapsed? And what if John F. Kennedy had lived? 
 
In this acclaimed book, leading historians from Andrew Roberts to Michael Burleigh explore what might have been if nine of the most decisive moments in modern history had never happened.

Virtual History

Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Francis Pryor

From our suburban streets which still trace the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded - evidence of man's effect on Britain is everywhere. Packed with over 250 maps and photographs, compellingly written and argued, this highly acclaimed book will permanently change the way you see your surroundings.

The Making of the British Landscape

How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today

S. M. Plokhy

Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. 
 
The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. 
 
Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War- and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly- written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.

Yalta

The Price of Peace

DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople. 
 
By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe - Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland - would have seemed little better. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs and Incas. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened. 
 
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy. 
 
Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history.

Civilization

The West and the Rest

Oliver Bullough

The Caucasus mountains are a land of jagged peaks and rugged people, who for over 200 years have rebelled against Russia's attempts to add them to its empire. Oliver Bullough's extraordinary debut tells their story for the first time. Travelling from remote village to refugee camp, rocky mountain gorge to forgotten massacre site, he discovers exiles, fighters, lost sects, defiant survivors - and an unbreakable spirit.

Let Our Fame Be Great

Journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus

The story of Carthage is one of the great epics of the Ancient World. And yet, thanks to the ruthlessness and brutality of the Roman destruction of the city under Scipio in 146 BC, we know relatively little about the city: its foundation, its expansion, its way of life, its literature and gods. Carthage has to all intents and purposes been driven to the margins of history. A tale of battles and empire-building, of bitter rivalry and destruction - and a great civilisation whose role in shaping European culture and history has, until now, been largely ignored.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed

The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

Patrick French

At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain's 350-year-old Indian Empire was broken into three pieces. The greatest mass migration in history began, as Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, and Britain's role as an imperial power came to an end. 
 
Patrick French's vivid and surprising account of the chaotic final years of colonial rule in India has been acclaimed as the definitive book on this subject. Journeying across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, he brings to life a cast of characters including spies, idealists, freedom fighters and politicians from Churchill to Gandhi.

Liberty or Death

India's Journey to Independence and Division

Inspired by hopes of both riches and of converting native people to Christianity, the Spanish adventurers of the fifteenth century convinced themselves that an earthly paradise existed in the Caribbean. This is the story of the hundreds of conquistadors who set sail on the precarious journey across the Atlantic - taking with them wheat, the horse, the guitar and the wheel as well as guns, malaria and slaves - to create an empire that made Spain the envy of the world. In this epic history Hugh Thomas brings Spain's rise to empire vividly to life, capturing the spirit of an ebullient age.

Rivers of Gold

The Rise of the Spanish Empire

Hetty Feather was left at a foundling hospital when she was a tiny baby. Having grown up in a loving foster family until she was five, and then finding herself returned to the hospital, she begins to question who her actual family are, and is determined to stop at nothing to find out where she came from. Jacqueline Wilson’s acclaimed series follows Hetty and her friend Diamond as they work their way up from their lowly backgrounds to become stars, overcoming loss, unkind bosses and flirtatious boys.

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