Biographies European History

Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank—Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its...

“From this century, in France, three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” –André Malraux Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She...

The dramatic untold story of Eugénie de Montijo, the woman who created haute couture, fought for women’s rights, opened France’s schools to girls and ruled the country as its last empress, yet today remains almost unknown. Although a nineteenth-century woman, her almost twenty-first-century...

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A brilliant look at turn-of-the-century Paris through the first in-depth study of the three women Proust used to create his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes. “Weber has done a remarkable job of bringing to life…a world of culture, glamour...

The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George...

From Michael Korda, author of the New York Times bestselling Eisenhower biography Ike and the captivating Battle of Britain book With Wings Like Eagles, comes the critically-acclaimed definitive biography of T. E. Lawrence—the legendary British soldier, strategist, scholar, and adventurer...

“Don’t cry darling. We need this baby. You will see.” With these words from her husband, Zoltán, Ibolya Rechnitzer’s fear of being pregnant during the uncertainty of wartime is somewhat eased. But in November 1942, four months after their baby, Andy, is born, Zoltán is drafted into the...

From the bestselling author of Stalin and The Last Tsar comes The Rasputin File, a remarkable biography of the mystical monk and bizarre philanderer whose role in the demise of the Romanovs and the start of the revolution can only now be fully known. For almost a century, historians could only...

In December 1795, on the midnight stroke of her seventeenth birthday, Marie-Thérèse, the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, fled Paris’s notorious Temple Prison. Kept in solitary confinement after her parents’ brutal execution during the Terror, she had been unaware of...

The unforgettable true story of two married journalists on an island-hopping run for their lives across the Pacific after the Fall of Manila during World War II—a saga of love, adventure, and danger. On New Year’s Eve, 1941, just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese...

The intriguing bond between monarch and prime minister and its crucial role during World War II The political and personal relationship between King George VI and Winston Churchill during World War II is one that has been largely overlooked throughout history, yet the trust and loyalty these men...

A jubilant celebration of Italy’s outsize impact on culture, from literature to art, music to movies, that “masterfully examines the multitude of reasons why so many people fall in love with Italy and the Italian lifestyle” (Forbes) Can you imagine painting without Leonardo, opera without...

A sweeping, groundbreaking epic that combines military with social history, to illuminate the ways in which Great Britain and its people were permanently transformed by the Second World War. Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at...

India’s Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world’s most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent India’s route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to...

The Untold Story of Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the...

What is blockchain? What is Bitcoin? How can central banks be instrumental in guiding a nation's economy? What are the underlying causes of trade deficits? Do trade wars actually help the domestic economy? How has the behavior of millennials and Generation Z affected the global economy? Find out...

One of New York Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the Fall How far can a single leader alter the course of history? From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how...

Once in Golconda "In this book, John Brooks-who was one of the most elegant of all business writers-perfectly catches the flavor of one of history's best-known financial dramas: the 1929 crash and its aftershocks. It's packed with parallels and parables for the modern reader." -From the Foreword...

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an...

“Strikingly original. . . . Nicolson brings to life superbly the horror, devastation, and gore of Trafalgar.” —The Economist Adam Nicolson takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the...