European Culture

A Times, Financial Times and Telegraph Book of the Year 2023 'Illuminates some of the great trends of our time' - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times 'Vivid, urgent and unsettling' - Tom Holland, author of Dominion _____ What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population...

In popular imagination, Lala Lajpat Rai is frequently associated with Bhagat Singh, who, by assassinating J.P. Saunders, avenged Rai’ s death, caused by a police lathi charge, and was hanged for it. Lajpat Rai is also remembered for his fervent opposition to British rule.In recent decades...

The story of dealers of Old Masters, champions of modern art, and victims of Nazi plunder. Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal, Charles Dellheim turns this story on its head by revealing how certain Jewish outsiders came to...

No partner? No problem! From economic independence to personal passions and everything in between, this guide profiles women who have had different reasons why they have chosen to remain single all throughout history that have nothing to do with the tragic trope of “spinsters.” What do...

In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts...

In this highly original approach to the history of the United States, James Moore focuses on the extraordinary role that prayer has played in every area of American life, from the time of the first settlers to the present day and beyond. A stirring chronicle of the spiritual life of a nation...

In this charming journey into the past, a historian reveals medieval wisdom that can still guide us today "One of the most compelling medieval history books I have ever read." –Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England Peter Jones was teaching medieval history at...

An astonishing account of life under a murderous regime amid a great city’s descent into utter annihilation In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war...

In this one-of-its-kind book by the late Alyque Padamsee, he invites us to re-examine and think afresh about some of our most deeply held beliefs, from love, marriage, terrorism, leadership, money, gender, faith to education. Let Me Hijack Your Mind is Alyque's parting gift to Indians, exhorting...

The Manipuri writer Binodini's Sahitya Akademi Award-winning historical novel The Princess and the Political Agent tells the love story of her aunt Princess Sanatombi and Lt. Col. Henry P. Maxwell, the British representative in the subjugated Tibeto-Burman kingdom of Manipur. A poignant story of...

This powerful Cold War novel tells the story of two cousins, one German and the other an American Army brat, as they navigate the political and social turmoil that threatens their friendship and ends in the abrupt rise of the Berlin Wall–which may separate them forever. Drew is an army brat, a...

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was much more than an ordinary electoral phenomenon: it brought to the fore two contrasting views of nationhood: between those who saw modern India in terms of secular republicanism and on the other hand were those who sought to blend technological...

Allahabad, early twentieth century. The British rule across India, but Avadhi culture is thriving. In this city where singers, musicians and poets assemble, a star emerges. Janki Bai Ilahabadi enthrals listeners wherever she performs, and counts as her fans maharajas and maharanis, poets and...

Are radical climate activists hurting the cause? Germany should have been a global leader in combating climate change—its voters consider it a major issue and back the world’s most powerful Green Party. Yet, Germany’s climate policies have been disappointing. What happened? In Climate...

The untold story of Hitler’s war on “degenerate” artists and the mentally ill that served as a model for the “Final Solution.” “A penetrating chronicle . . . deftly links art history, psychiatry, and Hitler’s ideology to devastating effect.”—The Wall Street Journal As a...

"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." —The New Yorker An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. An immigrant with a parrot in...

A young man’s moving story of war, friendship, and hope in which he recounts his harrowing escape from a brutal civil war in Yemen with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith activists in the West. Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair...

"I began to daydream about the jungle...." On April 6, 1940, explorer and future World War II spy Theodore Morde (who would one day attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), anxious about the perilous journey that lay ahead of him, struggled to fall asleep at the Paris Hotel in La Ceiba, Honduras...

The epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and the human costs and contradictions of modern empire. The Congo-Océan railroad stretches across the Republic of Congo from Brazzaville to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noir. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony, and it...

Olympus is the home of the Greek gods, much like Amravati of the Hindu devas. Zeus, leader of Olympians, wields a thunderbolt like Indra and rides an eagle like Vishnu. The feats of the Greek hero Heracles, known to Romans as Hercules, reminded many of Krishna, as did his name...