1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica
Chris Turney
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922725
The rivalry between Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen is a familiar story; what fewer people know is that, in 1912, five separate teams were exploring beyond the limits of the known world: Scott for Britain, Amundsen for Norway, Mawson for Australasia, Filchner for Germany and Shirase for Japan. The Antarctic discoveries made by these brave explorers enthralled the world and forever ... More/Buy
Antarctica: A Biography
David Day
Random House, HB, 9781741669084
A groundbreaking history of human interaction with Antarctica, the last continent on earth. For centuries it was suspected that there must be an undiscovered continent in the southern hemisphere. But explorers failed to find one. On his second voyage to the Pacific, Captain James Cook sailed further south than any of his rivals but failed to sight land. It was not ... More/Buy
Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khruschev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Frederick Kempe
Penguin, PB, 9780241961742
Checkpoint Charlie, 27 October 1961. At 9pm on a damp night, the Cold War reaches crisis point. US and Soviet tanks face off across the East-West divide, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, could spring the tripwire for nuclear war . . . Frederick Kempe's gripping book tells the story of the Cold War's most dramatic year, when ... More/Buy
Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden
Rachel Lichtenstein
Hamish hamilton, HB, 9780241142875
Hatton Garden is one of the most secret streets in England, home for two centuries to a deeply private working community of diamond and jewellery dealers. Intimately connected to the area both personally (her family run a jewellery business there) and professionally (as an artist archivist of London's streets), Rachel Lichtenstein is uniquely placed to explore the extraordinary history of this ... More/Buy
Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure
Tim Jeal
Faber, PB, 9780571249763
Between 1856 and 1876, five explorers, all British, took on the seemingly impossible task of discovering the source of the White Nile. Showing exceptional courage and extraordinary resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Samuel Baker, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and their reputations in the name of this quest. They journeyed through East and Central Africa into ... More/Buy
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
David Abulafia
Penguin, PB, 9780141027555
For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, ... More/Buy
A History of History
Alun Munslow
Routledge, PB, 9780415677158
In a provocative analysis of European and American historical thinking and practice since the early 18th century, A History of History confronts several basic assumptions about the nature of history. Among these are the concept of historical realism, the belief in representationalism and the idea that the past possesses its own narrative. What is offered in this book is a far-reaching ... More/Buy
A History of the World in 100 Objects
Neil MacGregor
Penguin, PB, 9780241951774
A golden galleon, a stone age tool, a credit card . . . every object tells a story. This astonishing, acclaimed history tells the story of the world, and our place in it, in an entirely new way, through 100 things we have either admired and preserved, or used, broken and thrown away. It will take you on a journey back ... More/Buy
Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII
Nicholas Rankin
Faber, PB, 9780571250639
In 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Fleming was personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence - the dynamic figure behind James Bond's fictional chief, 'M'. Here, Fleming had a brilliant idea: why not set up a unit of authorised looters, men who would go in hard with the front-line troops and steal enemy intelligence? Known as '30 Assault Unit', they took part ... More/Buy
In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution
Sophie Wahnich
Verso, HB, 9781844678624
For two hundred years after the French Revolution, the Republican tradition celebrated the execution of princes and aristocrats, defending the Terror that the Revolution inflicted upon on its enemies. But recent decades have brought a marked change in sensibility. The Revolution is no longer judged in terms of historical necessity but rather by 'timeless' standards of morality. In this succinct essay, ... More/Buy
Pakistan: A Personal History
Imran Khan
Bantam, PB, 9780857500649
Born only five years after Pakistan was created in 1947, Imran Khan has lived his country's history.Undermined by a ruling elite hungry for money and power, Pakistan now stands alone as the only Islamic country with a nuclear bomb, yet it is unable to protect its people from the carnage of regular bombings from terrorists and its own ally, America.Now with ... More/Buy
Reading Herodotus: A Guided Tour Through the Wild Boars, Dancing Suitors, and Crazy Tyrants of the History
Debra Hamel
Johns Hopkins University Press, PB, 9781421406565
Debra Hamel's book is a lively introduction to "The History of the Persian Wars", Herodotus' account of Persia's expansion under four kings-Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes - and its eventual collision with the city - states of Greece. "The History" can be a long slog for modern readers, but it is full of salacious tales about sex, violent death, divine prophecies, ... More/Buy
Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization
Robert A Williams
Palgrave, HB, 9780230338760
From one of the world's leading experts on Native American law and indigenous peoples' human rights comes an original and striking intellectual history of the tribe and Western civilization that sheds new light on how we understand ourselves and our contemporary society. Throughout the centuries, conquest, war, and unspeakable acts of violence and dispossession have all been justified by citing civilization's ... More/Buy
Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979
Dominic Sandbrook
Allen Lane, HB, 9781846140327
In the mid-1970s, Britain's fortunes seemed to have reached their lowest point since the Blitz. As inflation rocketed, the pound collapsed and car bombs exploded across London, as Harold Wilson consoled himself with the brandy bottle, the Treasury went cap in hand to the IMF and the Sex Pistols stormed their way to notoriety, it seemed that the game was up ... More/Buy
Titans of History
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Quercus, PB, 9781780870267
In Titans of History, Simon Sebag Montefiore brings together a vivid and compelling selection of the lives of the towering figures that, for better of for worse, have changed the course of history. The 14th-century Mongol warlord Tamerlane, who once ordered the building of a pyramid of 70,000 human skulls from those that his army had beheaded, rubs shoulders with Oskar ... More/Buy
The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels
Matthew Sweet
Faber, PB, 9780571234783
Spies: Meet Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster, the woman from M15 who has the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas. Royals: Meet Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, born in a suite at Claridge's that was declared Yugoslav territory for the night. Players: Meet Joyce Stone, whose husband leads the band at the Dorchester, keeping dancers foxtrotting even as the shudders of ... More/Buy