Ancient Biography

The first monotheistic religion was born in ancient Persia, more than 2000 years before any other under the leadership of Zoroaster. As a lone philosopher and wanderer, Zoroaster traveled Persia to spread his teachings facing persecution, assassination attempts, and more. Dive into both Zoroaster's life and the beliefs of the faith practice Zoroastrianism, which is still alive today. Just as in ancient times, many practitioners are forced to survive persecution and violence in order to keep their cultural heritage alive.

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: the worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to...

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves. In 1991, twenty-four-year-old Lynx Vilden crawled out of a sweat lodge covered in mud...

The John Milton Poetry Collection includes four of his most beloved works, sharing Milton's pioneering writing on everything from politics to religion. As you listen, be transported to the 17th century when political and religious tensions were high and war was imminent. Listen as Milton's works reveal his opinions on biblical themes, political division, and personal freedoms.

Under Egypt’s wind-swept sands, mummies and breathtaking treasure await those savvy and daring enough to seek them out. Intrepid archaeologist Zahi Hawass is one such adventurer, having made major discoveries in the pyramids at Giza and the Valley of the Golden Mummies.

The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world and his powerful, influential family guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story. Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of...

Two works by the Roman historian, Tacitus. Agricola is a portrait of Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain, and the first surviving account of the geography, climate, and peoples of Britain. The German tribes of Northern Europe are discussed in Germania.

Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating...

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire.

James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.

ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 See ancient Rome through the eyes of a gladiator—from the evening before the games at the Colosseum to the evening after "A grippingly original way of making the alien world of the Roman Amphitheatre both accessible and comprehensible." —Tom...

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman (""Elegant and scrupulous""—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa (""A mesmerizing page-turner""—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant...

From the New York Times bestselling author Everything All at Once comes a beautiful poetry collection exploring motherhood, grief, the unending road to healing, and the redeeming power of love. The word radicle is defined as the root of a plant embryo, the first organ to appear when a seed...

Most people assume that the world has been explored and true adventure is dead: This book is one man’s rebuttal. Explorer and conservationist Paul Rosolie shares his incredible life in the Amazon rainforest—and what we can learn from the people fighting to protect it. “On behalf of the...

William Shakespeare's gripping play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals' plot put together by Caesar's disaffected officers and designed with precision. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, but they had the help of a third man - Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar's entourage, one of Caesar's leading generals, and a lifelong friend.

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....

Ramesses II ruled the Nile Valley and the wider Egyptian empire from 1279 to 1213 B.C., one of the longest reigns in pharaonic history. He was a cultural innovator, a relentless self-promoter, and an astute diplomat—the peace treaty signed after the Battle of Kadesh was the first in recorded history. He outbuilt every other Egyptian pharaoh, leaving behind the temples of Abu Simbel; the great hypostyle hall of Karnak; the tomb for his wife Nefertari; and his own memorial, the Ramesseum.

Marcus Porcius Cato: aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops, political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher, a hardnosed defender of tradition who presented himself as a man out of the sacred Roman past-and the last man standing when Rome's Republic fell to tyranny. His blood feud with Caesar began in the chamber of the Senate, played out on the battlefields of a world war, and ended when he took his own life rather than live under a dictator.

Winner of the Baifang Schell Book Prize 2025 Orwell Prize Finalist One of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of 2024 “A sprawling, complex morality tale, sweeping us along.” —The Wall Street Journal “In telling this personal story about family memory, exile and...