Historian Michael H. Kater chronicles the rise and fall of one of Germany's most iconic cities in this fascinating and surprisingly provocative history of Weimar. Weimar was a centre of the arts during the Enlightenment and hence the cradle of German...

Imprisoned in the Tower of London after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, Sir Walter Ralegh spent the next seven years producing his massive "History of the World". Created with the aid of a library of more than five hundred books he was allowed...

For sale in CIS only! The opening month of the Great War ending in the Battle of the Marne (6-9 September 1914) was a turning point in modern history. The French and British armies were forced into a long retreat from Belgium but subsequently regrou...

This first-ever biography of William Beckford provides a unique look at eighteenth-century British history from the perspective of the colonies. Even in his own time, Beckford was seen as a metaphor for the dramatic changes occurring during this era....

A clothier and a deeply religious man, Joseph Ryder faithfully kept a diary from 1733 until his death, two and a half million words later, in 1768. Recently rediscovered and brilliantly interpreted by historian Matthew Kadane, Ryder's diary provides...

Mount Vesuvius has been famous ever since its eruption in 79 CE, when it destroyed and buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But less well-known is the role it played in the science and culture of early modern Italy, as Sean Cocco revea...

In "Civilization and Its Discontents", Sigmund Freud claimed that Rome must be comprehended as "not a human dwelling place but a mental entity", in which the palaces of the Caesars still stand alongside modern apartment buildings in layers of brick,...

For sale in CIS only! "The Will to Survive" describes how a small country, for much of its existence squeezed between two empires, surrounded by hostile neighbours and subjected to invasion and occupation, survived the frequent tragedies of its even...

In December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a brilliant French artillery officer and a Jew of Alsatian descent, was court-martialed for selling secrets to the German military attache in Paris based on perjured testimony and trumped-up evidence. The sen...

Why did capitalism and colonialism arise in Europe and not elsewhere? Why were parliamentarian and democratic forms of government founded there? What factors led to Europe's unique position in shaping the world? Thoroughly researched and persuasively...