Historical

Bloomsbury presents Lords of the Salt Road by Angus Konstam, read by David Monteath. The story of the Norse Earls of Orkney, whose lands once covered much of Scotland, and whose reach extended as far as Scandinavia, continental Europe and even the Mediterranean. Lords of the Salt Road reveals...

“Does Thomas Jefferson still matter?” ask two leading historians on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson has been reinvented more than perhaps any American president in history. In the nineteenth century, slavery’s defenders invoked Jefferson’s...

Often called the “Father of Geometry,” Euclid’s influence is so pervasive that his book, The Elements, was the primary math manual for over 2,000 years. It was not a “textbook” in the modern sense, as it did not have problem sets, word problems, or diagrams for practice, but it was a foundational reference and logical guide that students had to read, memorize, and demonstrate. In the Western and Islamic worlds, Euclid’s Elements was the standard geometry text for almost every educated person until the 19th century.

Bloomsbury presents Admiral Collingwood by Max Adams, read by James Lailey. Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of thirteen. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy he rose to become a fine seaman, a master of gunnery, a battle commander...

The brilliant and sometimes scandalous lives of twenty-one women who made French history. From Eleanor of Aquitaine to Edith Piaf, Colette to Coco Chanel, discover the lives of 21 women who made French history. French women have always had so much more to say than ‘let them eat cake’! Whether kicking the English out of Orléans, marching on Versailles or running messages for the French resistance, their stories of courage, creativity and genius have long defined French history.

Castro: A Biography by Consent offers the most comprehensive and in-depth life history of one of the most iconic and controversial revolutionary leaders of the modern world. Respected by some, despised by others, Fidel Castro was a force to reckon with, and Claudia Furiati spent nine years of intensive research unraveling and chronicling his story through seven decades of Cuban history.

Instant New York Times Bestseller! Why did one of the world’s most successful business titans, an oil magnate who rivaled the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, disappear from history? The author of the acclaimed bestseller The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel has the enthralling answer. With...

Herman Webster Mudgett was born in 1861 in a small New Hampshire hill town, and he was dead before he turned 35. In the years between, operating under a name he had constructed to replace his own, he built a hotel in Chicago designed to kill its guests, committed a number of murders whose exact count remains in dispute, and earned the distinction of being among the first Americans to whom the word “serial killer”—a term that did not yet exist in his lifetime—could reasonably be applied.

Bloomsbury presents The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor by Elizabeth Norton, read by Melanie Crawley. England, late 1547. Henry VIII is dead. His 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth is living with the old king's widow Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour. Ambitious, charming and dangerous...

The tragic story of ancient Greece's last democratic leader and his doomed fight to save Athens from Macedonian domination In the spring of 340 BCE, news arrived that Philip of Macedon had seized a town in central Greece, a base from which he could march on Athens. In the fierce debates about...

“Now I had approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary year.”—Solomon Northup Born and raised a freeman in New...

As the daughter of a decorated general in the Imperial Russian army, Alexandra Kollontai was a member of the elite from birth. From that comfortable perch, she might easily have lived out her days in the drawing rooms and social circles of St. Petersburg's upper classes. Instead, she devoted her life to tearing that world apart.

Kolchoz è la vera storia di una famiglia che abbraccia quattro generazioni, ripercorrendo oltre un secolo di storia russa e francese, fino alla guerra in Ucraina. Emmanuel Carrère la affronta personalmente, con una consumata abilità narrativa che rende la loro storia la nostra storia. Ci rapisce con il suo immenso talento in questa straordinaria saga familiare, dove l'intimo si intreccia brillantemente con l'universale.

Der Alchemist von der Pfaueninsel. Das neue Buch des Bestseller-Autors und "großen Geschichtenerzählers" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Tauchen wir ein in die großen Träume eines großen Mannes: Johannes Kunckel ist ein Magier und Alchemist, der daran glaubt, Gold zaubern zu können. Der preußische König schenkt ihm deshalb die Pfaueninsel zwischen Potsdam und Berlin, damit er im Geheimen in seiner Zauberwerkstatt aus dem Feuer eine neue Welt erschaffen kann. Aus seinem Ofen entsteigt am Ende ein Glas, wie es zuvor kein Menschenauge je gesehen hatte: rot wie ein Rubin.

In the year 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean Henry Ford revealed Ford’s newest vehicle, the Model A , and Ray Oehrtmann was born to Frederick and Mary Oehrtmann in Lafayette, Indiana, the youngest of five children. Little did his parents know that they would experience the Great Depression, that Ray and his brother, Bob, would fight in a World War, and that Ray would move to Colorado, where he eventually worked on machining parts for the United States space station, Skylab.

No meu mundo de infância, eu só conseguia perceber a essência de duas gerações anteriores: meus avós (apenas maternos) e meus pais. Meus avós riam e brincavam com seus netos, embora seus rostos mostrassem a aflição fatalista que vivenciaram na Europa durante os difíceis anos da primeira metade do século XX. Eles estavam lá e conheciam o sentido da vida além do que podemos imaginar. É tão simples que seus rostos nos mostram a diferença entre existir e sobreviver.

Im August 1897 bricht der belgische Kommandant Adrien de Gerlache auf, um die Antarktis zu erobern. Bereits auf dem Weg gen Süden gibt es zahlreiche Rückschläge: Stürme, Beinahe-Meutereien, Strandungen. Als der nach Ruhm strebende de Gerlache schließlich vor der Wahl steht, geschlagen nach Hause zurückzukehren oder kurz vor Wintereinbruch tiefer ins Eis zu fahren, entscheidet er sich für Letzteres – mit fatalen Folgen. Die Belgica bleibt im Packeis stecken.

In quiet, lovely prose, Julie Brill has delivered a powerful reminder of why our stories—personal, familial, historical—are so crucial. A moving excavation of a family story.–Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure Discover a powerful, untold chapter of Holocaust history and a daughter’s enduring quest to know the story that began a generation before her birth.

The exceptional tale of an unorthodox, seventeenth–century married couple whose rags-to-riches story fundamentally rewrites our knowledge of American history at its very beginnings. A man thought to be Muslim from Morocco and a German barmaid are hardly the image we have of America's founders...

Auch 200 Jahre nach seiner Geburt ist Otto von Bismarck eine hochgradig umstrittene, von Mythen umwobene Gestalt. Christoph Nonn schaut hinter die Legenden und entdeckt einen Mann, dessen Zeit unserer heutigen verblüffend ähnlich ist. Kriegstreiber oder Friedenspolitiker, Modernisierungsverhinderer oder weißer Revolutionär, Nationalheld oder Dämon der Deutschen: Die Liste der Beinamen, die Bismarck gegeben worden sind, ist lang. Doch der „Reichsgründer" war weder ein Übermensch noch ein Monster.

A biography at 24. What can you do with life know and tell? Not much at first glance, but when I think about it , I feel like I've already had more than 9 lives. No, I was never beaten or abused, I have a family and a roof over my head. And yet I wanted everything completely differently or...

From Deadwood to Aberdeen, Vermillion to Belle Fourche, the frontier towns of South Dakota were populated by some of the toughest and most dangerous characters in the West. Chief Two Sticks led a starving band of rebels on a desperate path of destruction. Bud Stevens's murder of a cattle king's...

Ce livre offre un aperçu de la réalité cachée derrière une façade qui a longtemps fonctionné, mais qui s'est pourtant fissurée à maintes reprises. Au cœur du récit se trouve une narratrice qui, dès son enfance, a appris à décrypter son environnement comme un système d'alerte...

Ich bin gerade 24 Jahre alt und habe beschlossen, meine Lebensgeschichte aufzuschreiben. Vielleicht wunderst du dich, warum ich in so jungem Alter schön auf eine solche Idee komme und zunächst scheinst du da ja auch Recht zu haben. Ich habe auf den ersten Blick kein allzu schweres Leben. Ich...

La vida de la implacable y legendaria espía soviética África de Las Heras, un fresco de la historia social, política y cultural del siglo XX, a través de los ojos de la niña para la cual fungía de ocasional niñera que, cincuenta años después, ya consagrada escritora, descubre la verdadera identidad de su nana y emprende un viaje alucinante de reconstrucción de su biografía y de la propia.