The Blazing World

In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations. “A towering achievement.... Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first...

From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book tracing the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. A WALL STREET JOURNAL...

“A witty, learned, authoritative survey of philosophical thought.” —The New York Times Book Review The first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of philosophy to cover both Western and Eastern traditions, from one of the world’s most eminent thinkers The story of...

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — The Boston Globe One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Historian...

C. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale, John Knox, Dr. Johnson, Richard...

What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging...

From the author of NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO, a powerful story of war in our time, love of country, the experience of tragedy, and a platoon at the center of it all. This story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly nineteen-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an...

A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a...

For thousands of years, Homer's ancient epic poem the

Iliad has enchanted readers from around the world. When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people. Her compelling 12-lecture look at this literary masterpiece -whether it's the work of many authors or the "vision" of a single blind poet - makes it vividly clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the

Iliad remains not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told but also one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written.

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human...

“I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book…there are clues and messages for every fortunate reader who picks it up.” —Annie Proulx *A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice* A landmark history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of...

An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history  Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the...

The definitive biography of the father and son who reshaped the ancient world. "Brings to life the full drama of ancient history." —Wall Street Journal Alexander the Great's conquests staggered the world. He led his army across thousands of miles, overthrowing the greatest empires of his time...

The creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of Rome explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn. In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge tells the...

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.