Europe

Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world....

In this series of lectures, Professor Katherine Elkins details the lives and works of the premier French writers of the last two centuries....

The early summer of 1914 was the most glorious Europeans could remember. But, behind the scenes, the most destructive war the world had yet known was moving inexorably into being, a war that would continue to resonate into the 21st century....

There is no story in 20th-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany....

In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life for the first time the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin....

Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime explorers of all time.... 

In The Battle of the Marne, the distinguished WWI scholar Holger Herwig argues that the opening battle of the war was perhaps the most significant land battle of the 20th century....

From the earliest recorded history of the Russian state, its people have sought to define their place in the world....

Penguin presents the unabridged audiobook edition of Empire by Niall Ferguson, read by Jonathan Keeble....

How is it that the small continent of Europe, with its rich multiplicity of cultures and traditions, has managed to exert so profound an influence on the rest of the world....

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction....

This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope....

Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime explorers of all time. Over three remarkable voyages of discovery into the Pacific in the latter part of the 18th century, Cook unravelled the oldest mystery surrounding the existence of Terra Australis Incognita - the Great South Land. He became the first explorer to circumnavigate New Zealand and establish that it was two main islands; discover the Hawaiian Islands for the British Empire; and left an enduring legacy. 

The Cro-Magnon were Homo sapiens, and the most defining characteristics of the species are the cultural traits that begin to show in the archaeological record. Tools were beginning to be made from multiple materials, and these people would often travel long distances or trade to acquire specific materials for tools. Symbolic material became increasingly common among them, as cave paintings, figurines, shell beads, pendants, and even early burials were more common with modern humans than Neanderthals.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) was one of the most important documents to come out of World War I – specifically the period of the Armistice and the subsequent settlement negotiations. And, a century on, it remains of particular relevance to our times – an uncompromising and forthright analysis of how international diplomacy can be suffused by personalities, prejudices, personal ambition and outright, uncontrolled feelings of revenge. 

On a snowy January morning in 1889, a worried servant hacked open a locked door at the remote hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods. Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed, blood oozing from their mouths. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary appeared to have shot his 17-year-old mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, as she slept, sat with the corpse for hours, and, when dawn broke, turned the pistol on himself. A century has transformed this bloody scene into romantic tragedy, but Mayerling is also the story of family secrets

This is one of the great untold stories of the 20th century. It is a firsthand account of a mission by an SAS soldier sent behind the Iron Curtain by MI6 to find someone who didn't necessarily want to be found and how, on a follow-up mission, he found himself manoeuvring against a mysterious KGB officer and a murder plot by Kremlin hardliners. If the plot had succeeded, it would have given the Russians the excuse they were looking for to roll out the tanks across East Germany, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen - and the map of Europe would look very different today.

When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s....