History

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us....

The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens....

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering.

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road.

When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power....

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges....

Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus looked to the future. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century explores the present....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Inglorious Empire written and read by Shashi Tharoor....

Two U.S. Navy SEAL officers demonstrate how to apply powerful battlefield leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life.

Authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions....

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making - from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy....

India provides a dazzling new history of the Indian subcontinent and its diverse peoples in global context—from antiquity to today.

Designed for ardent history enthusiasts, India's Struggle for Independence is one of the most exhaustive and precise accounts of the struggle of Indian Independence ever written in the literary world.

Who are we Indians? Where did we come from? To tell us the story of our ancestry, journalist Tony Joseph goes 65,000 years into the past–when a band of Homo sapiens first made their way from Africa into the Indian subcontinent. These were the First Indians....

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company....

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers....

Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location but about the world in general....

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1961, this worldwide bestselling classic chronicles the most infamous era of our times.

For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west—in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches....

In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in the ice

India's armed forces play a key role in protecting the country and occupy a special place in the Indian people's hearts, yet standard accounts of contemporary Indian history rarely have a military dimension. In India's Wars, serving Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam seeks to rectify that oversight....

On 20 October 1962, high in the Himalayas, over 400 Indian soldiers were massacred, and the valley was overrun by soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army....

The history of India's struggle for freedom is usually told from the perspective of the non-violent movement. Yet, the story of armed resistance to colonial occupation is just as important....

When ChatGPT was released, the world changed overnight. Even as we all played with the new toy, a very real danger was quickly coming to light.

In seinen Visionen erschaute er unter anderem einen Dritten Weltkrieg, der offenbar durch eine furchtbare Aggression des radikalen Islam (vielleicht im Bündnis mit anderen despotischen Mächten) gegen den Westen ausgelöst wird. Dass er ein begnadeter Seher war, bewies Alois Irlmaier in seinem dramatischen Leben vielfach. Während des zweiten Weltkrieges konnte er beispielsweise auf paranormale Weise erkennen, ob vermisste Soldaten noch lebten oder tot waren, und in der Nachkriegszeit löste Irlmaier dank seiner Gabe eine ganze Reihe von Kriminalfällen, bei denen die Polizei im Dunklen tappte.

Un compendio fascinante de mitos, leyendas y realidades históricas ¿Existió la ciudad de la Atlántida? ¿Pronunció Julio César las famosas palabras «¿Tú también, hijo?», antes de morir? A veces, la narración patrimonial y literaria difiere de los hechos. Así, este libro, escrito con afán divulgativo, pretende transitar por la delgada línea roja que separa los relatos de tintes legendarios y folclóricos, y el mundo real.

In this love letter to the world’s favourite country, you’ll find everything youknow and love about Italy: the classic food, the dreamy landscapes, the Renaissance masterpieces. Along the way you’ll meet the people who make Italy what it is, the philosophies they live by and the traditions that make la dolce vita. We all want to live the Italian life. With this book, you’re one step closer.

Algumas mulheres conheceram o céu, outras o inferno; umas foram enaltecidas, santificadas, outras demonizadas; mas todas tocaram as profundezas do próprio ser, chegaram ao limite de sua condição e de seu tempo e se eternizaram na história. Ao tomar contato com a história e os dilemas vividos por figuras como Afrodite, Cinderela, Simone de Beauvoir e Virginia Woolf, a autora nos guia em uma viagem de resgate da essência perdida ao ressignificar o papel feminino no mundo.

Michael Wolffsohn setzt sich, ausgehend von der aktuellen Politik, in seinem neuen Buch mit dem Verhältnis von Judentum, Christentum und Islam–gestern, heute und morgen–auseinander. In gewohnt pointierter Weise zieht er dazu Geschichte und Theologie heran. Seine illusionslosen und dennoch teils humorvollen und immer messerscharfen Analysen gelten insbesondere Terror, Krieg und Gewalt. Seine große mediale Präsenz als Talkshowgast, Interviewpartner und Publizist erklärt sich durch seine Fähigkeit zu faktengesättigten und allgemeinverständlichen Statements, die auch dieses Buch prägen.

Hidden in the names of English towns and villages, in copses, fields, lanes and hills, are the ghostly traces of birds conjuring powerful identities for people in ancient landscapes. What are their stories and secrets? How did people encounter birds over a thousand years ago? In The Cuckoo’s Lea, Michael J. Warren sets out on the trail of these ghosts. Captivated and guided by the secrets of place names, he finds their stories entangled with his own explorations of places through birds all across England.

Opening the Gates of Hell is based on over a decade’s research in archives and sites across Europe. It is a ground-breaking examination of the start of the Nazi–Soviet conflict, a narrative history not just of the fighting, but also the impact on civilians, the atrocities committed by both sides and ethnic cleansing carried out by the inhabitants of the regions invaded. This fascinating history tells the stories of bravery, cowardice, misery and horror through the eyes of those who were there including ordinary soldiers, generals, leaders, politicians and civilians on both sides.

In 21st century commodity culture, we are all intimately involved with objects: we covet a Birkin bag; we keep trainers box-fresh. We are, in a sense, all fetishists. But occasionally this desire spills into something more subversive. SECOND SKIN offers a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics commonly fetishised, unpacking their histories, their expressive potential, and the communities they give rise to. Drawing from her encounters with fellow fetishists and kinksters, it is also the story of Anastasiia Fedorova's own journey.

After five long centuries, the roots of colonialism still run deep. This is a powerful new reckoning with Britain’s imperial legacy, its transformative effects on Britain and the Caribbean and its enduring role in systemic racism today. And it is a call for us all to learn from the challenges and failures of history and to play our part in creating a blueprint for the future. We cannot change the past. But we can repair the present.

In TANK, best-selling historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers, and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most important developments in military history.

Des Powell left school with no qualifications and little in the way of formal education. At nineteen he signed up to join the Parachute Regiment. Famously, the Paras is home to the UK military's second-toughest training regime after the SAS. Des Powell knows all about both. In fact, Des knows SAS selection better than anyone because he's done it twice. In SAS: Trial by Fire he tells the story of those gruelling tests: how Para training turned him into a soldier but, more crucially, how the SAS process turned him into a member of the elite.

From breakups that ended empires to naps that sank ships, 10 Mistakes That Changed History reveals how overlooked historical errors are responsible for some of the most era-defining events of the past. Featuring many of the most recognisable characters and episodes in history, from Cleopatra to the sinking of the Titanic, comedian and historian Paul Coulter reframes our understanding of these pivotal moments, revealing how human errors and their unintended outcomes have governed our world – and will likely determine our future.

It’s 1996, and Jeremy has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights, including immigration. The pair snatch time in forests and deserts, London fashion shows, Berlin sex clubs and East Village hotel rooms. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in San Francisco. Deep House moves through the couple’s domiciles while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before.

For more than 200 years, Egypt's ancient monuments have fascinated researchers and curiosity seekers worldwide. From small children's mummies to colossal pyramids, every archaeological find has been scrutinised to unravel the mysteries of one of the world's oldest civilisations. Initially, investigations were conducted with digging spoons, brushes, and meticulous archaeological methods. In recent years, advanced scanning and DNA analysis have been employed.

As World War II raged across the Russian steppes, in Africa and especially in the skies over Europe, elite German and Soviet forces fought a bitter battle in an isolated northern corner of Europe. Here, the battle was for control of the ice-free port of Murmansk, where the Soviet Union received convoy after convoy loaded with British and American tanks, guns, fuel, small arms, food and aircraft. Supplies from the Allied convoys kept the Soviet Union alive at a critical time during the early stages of the war, and Hitler therefore tried every means to stop the convoys.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. This bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other infamous strategists. The 48 Laws of Power will fascinate any listener interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

The Discovery of India, written by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is a timeless classic that blends history, philosophy, and personal reflection into a rich narrative of India’s journey through the ages. This Hindi audiobook is a faithful translation of Nehru’s original English text, bringing his thoughts and insights to Hindi-speaking listeners in a vivid and engaging form.

In Why I Am a Hindu, one of India’s finest public intellectuals gives us a profound book about one of the world’s oldest and greatest religions. Starting with a close examination of his own belief in Hinduism, he ranges far and wide in his study of the faith.

From his perspective in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli's aim in this classic work was to resolve conflict with the ruling prince, Lorenzo de Medici. Machiavelli based his insights on the way people really are rather than an ideal of how they should be. This is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, or a president.

Delve into the profound insights of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in Pakistan or the Partition of India. This seminal work offers an in-depth analysis of the factors leading to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Ambedkar's scholarly approach and compelling arguments shed light on the political, social, and religious dynamics that shaped one of the most significant events in South Asian history. A must-listen for anyone seeking to understand the historical context and enduring impact of partition.

Uncover the historical and social roots of caste discrimination in Who Were the Shudras? by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. This groundbreaking work challenges the traditional narratives of Hindu society, offering a meticulous examination of the origins and status of the Shudra caste. Ambedkar's critical analysis and visionary insights call for a re-evaluation of social hierarchies and advocate for equality and justice.

In The Truth about Muhammad, New York Times best-selling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer offers an honest and telling portrait of the founder of Islam - perhaps the first such portrait in half a century - unbounded by fear and political correctness, unflinching, and willing to face the hard facts about Muhammad's life that continue to affect our world today.

The Nanda Devi Mystery: How India and America Lost a Nuclear Device is the thoroughly riveting and sometimes bizarre story of how India and America tried to install a nuclear-powered surveillance device on top of the Himalayas to snoop on China and then lost it forever.

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.