History Ages

Henry Avery of Devon pillaged a fortune from a Mughal ship off the coast of India and then vanished into thin air—and into legend. More ballads, plays, biographies and books were written about Avery’s adventures than any other pirate. His contemporaries crowned him "the pirate king" for pulling off the richest heist in pirate history and escaping with his head intact (unlike Blackbeard and his infamous Flying Gang). Avery was now the most wanted criminal on earth. To the authorities, Avery was the enemy of all mankind. To the people he was a hero.

In her bestselling memoirs Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts. Billie Breslin...

The author of the USA Today and New York Times bestselling novel The Girl Who Came Home has once again created an unforgettable historical novel. Step into the world of Victorian London, where the wealth and poverty exist side by side. This is the story of two long-lost sisters, whose lives...

Most anticipated by USA Today, W Magazine, New York Post, Parade, Bustle, Buzzfeed, Reader's Digest, and PopSugar and named one of the best historical fiction books of the year by Cosmopolitan! ""A beautifully rendered portrait of a young woman finding her courage and her voice.""—Lisa Wingate...

"Citizen Kane does Adventureland." —The Washington Post The outlandish, hilarious, terrifying, and almost impossible-to-believe story of the legendary, dangerous amusement park where millions were entertained and almost as many bruises were sustained, told through the eyes of the founder's...

For readers of The Tiger’s Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl’s coming of age—and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKPAGE, BOOKLIST, AND...

Using a wide variety of source materials, including archaeology, runes, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names, and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves, Thraldom provides the most comprehensive survey of slavery in the Viking Age.

Joan of Kent may have been the daughter of a disgraced earl, but there's more than meets the eye about this high-spirited and savvy woman . . . who soon changes the course of history. At the height of the Middle Ages in the fourteenth century, King Edward III of England is determined to use any...

Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realize. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience....

The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis In 1983, Thomas...

In 1467, the Onin War ushered in a period of unparalleled conflict and rivalry in Japan that came to be called the Age of Warring States. In this book, Stephen Turnbull offers a masterly exposition of the wars, explaining what led to Japan’s disintegration into rival domains after more than a century of relative peace, the years of fighting that followed and the period of gradual fusion when the daimyo (great names) strove to reunite Japan under a new Shogun. Peace returned to Japan with the end of the Osaka War in 1615.

Learn all about the Savage Stone Age, with all the nasty bits left in. You probably thought that Stone Age people spent all their time standing stones up on one end and rubbing sticks together to make fires.

From the late eighth century to somewhere around the middle of the 11th century, the history of Europe was dominated by the people who have become known as the Vikings. The Vikings were among the first global explorers who established territory that stretched from North America in the west to Constantinople in the east, and from the frigid wastes of the Arctic in the north to the warm shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the south.

Humans have long sought to comprehend the enormities of cosmic space and time. Here, best selling science writer Timothy Ferris tells the story of that quest. He interweaves the majestic themes of astronomy, physics, religion, and philosophy with fresh and lasting portraits of the men and women who created what has been called our society's most precious treasure - its conception of the universe at large.

Made into a feature film by the creators of Downton Abbey, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous...

The period from 1870 to 1900 in the US has become known as the Gilded Age, during which America was transformed almost beyond recognition. The Gilded Age was an era of entrepreneurs, inventions, industrial development, and new ideas. Most of all, it was a period of rapid and profound change that came at a high cost for the working class.

The astonishing life of Caterina Sforza, one of the most prominent women of Renaissance Italy, who was a wife, mother, leader, and warrior with enough fierceness to make Machiavelli himself wince. In this glittering biography, Elizabeth Lev reexamines Caterina's extraordinary life and...

Celebrate Indigenous thinkers and inventions with this beautifully designed, award-winning interactive nonfiction book—perfect for fans of Braiding Sweetgrass. Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving...

*A NEW YORK TIMES PICK FOR TOP 22 NONFICTION BOOKS TO READ THIS FALL!* A Navajo Ranger’s chilling and clear-eyed memoir of his investigations into bizarre cases of the paranormal and unexplained in Navajoland As a Native American with parents of both Navajo and Cherokee descent, Stanley...