History & Archaeology Books

When did the British Government become the world's largest drugs pusher? What tree is frequently used to treat cancer? Which everyday condiment is the most widely traded spice on the planet?Plants are an indispensable part of our everyday life. From the...

Soldiers disguised as a herd of cows, cork bath mats for troops crossing streams and a tank with a piano attachment for camp concerts are just some of the absurd inventions to be found in this book of cartoons designed to keep spirits up during the...

For the first six centuries from the institution's foundation, Latin was the language spoken and written at the University of Oxford. It's no surprise, then, to find that the inscriptions carved into the monuments, colleges and municipal buildings of the...

'Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour.' - Talleyrand'He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.' - Jonathan Swift 'There is no love sincerer than the love of food' wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1903. Poets,...

As the devastation of German-occupied Belgium awakened Britain to the horrors of the Great War, a group of English cartoonists responded to these events with characteristic black humor. Among the most inventive responses was advertising artist John...

From the tale of the goatherd whose animals became frisky on coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, this book, illustrated with eighteenth-century satirical cartoons and early advertisements, tells the extraordinary story of our...

Published to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, this book celebrates the greatest of English novelists by illustrating some of his abiding preoccupations. Prompted by quotations from the novels and other writings, each themed chapter explores...

Q is the Quadrille, danced at our partyR for the Reindeer, of Santa Claus heartyThis very special picture book is an unusual and utterly enchanting ABC entirely devoted to the theme of Christmas. Each of the twenty-six images opens a window onto festive...

This entertaining little book veers from savage satire to idealized adoration, and offers a refreshingly irreverent overview of British rulers all the way from Caesar to George, Prince of Wales, the future king.Henry Eighth from 1509 to 1547 - in his...

Shepherd Mead, bestselling author of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, came to live in England with his family in 1958. Six years later he published a satirical handbook for fellow Americans to guide them through the nuances of British...

Ralph Ayres was head cook at New College in the 1770s. This book is a fascinating insight into the eighteenth-century kitchen, a period of great interest to social and culinary historians, and includes recipes for famous dishes such as Quaking Pudding,...

According to the United Nations, Myanmar's Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Only now has the media turned its attention to their plight at the hands of a country led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet the...

When South Sudan's war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut's dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa's longest war, the continent's biggest country split in two.It was an...

Japan's post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and...

Why are relations between politically mobilised ethnic identities and the nation-state sometimes peaceful and at other times fraught and violent? Madurika Rasaratnam's book sets out a novel answer to this key puzzle in world politics through a detailed...

The history of the Latvian people begins some four and a half millennia ago with the arrival of the proto-Baltic Indo-Europeans to northern Europe. One branch of these migrants coalesced into a community which evolved a distinctive and remarkably robust...

New York Times Book of the Year The Blood Telegram is an unprecedented chronicle of a pivotal but little-known chapter of the Cold War. Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan's military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the...

In 2012 Narendra Modi became the first Hindu nationalist politician thrice elected to lead a state of the Indian Union, his stewardship as Chief Minister of Gujarat being the longest in that state's history. Modi and his BJP supporters explained his...

The emancipation of women cannot be complete unless it is coupled with the emancipation of men. This can only be accomplished by drawing our social values from the Qur'an and the sunnah. In this volume, the author shows that mixed social life was the...

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both suffering from shell shock, were sent to convalesce at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh in 1917. Owen, who referred to himself as the 'poet's poet' was unpublished at the time. It was the influence and...

'a wonderfully atmospheric tale ...offers a brief, magical escape to a kinder, simpler time' Roger Cox,The ScotsmanIt's 1968, and the fishermen of Kinloch are preparing to celebrate the old New Year on the twelfth of January. The annual pilgrimage to the...

This is the untold story of black music its triumph over racism, segregation, undercapitalised record labels, media discrimination and political anxiety told through the perspective of the most powerful office in the world: from Louis...

Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial...

On 8 March, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade made an amphibious landing at Da Nang on the south central coast of South Vietnam, marking the beginning of a conflict that would haunt American politics and society...

At Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919, there occurred an event unique in naval history. The German High Seas Fleet, one of the most formidable ever built was deliberately sent to the bottom of the sea at the British Grand Fleet's principal anchorage at Orkney by...

There is more to St Helena than an exiled emperor; the tiny island in the middle of the wild South Atlantic Ocean has a rich garden heritage and an extraordinarily diverse flora, both exotic and endemic. This was the consequence of St Helena being the...

Bringing together messages from vintage Kew postcards with new prose reflections,Love from Kewis a one-of-a-kind look at the enduring needs for human connection - with each other as much as the natural world.In 2020, the United Kingdom recognised the...

*Winner of the NSW Premier's History Award - General History*Roses, jasmine, fuchsia, chrysanthemums, and rhododendrons bloom in gardens across the world, and yet many of the most common varieties have root in Asia. How is this global flowering...

Transnational Coupling in the Age of Nation Making during the 19th and 20th Centuries examines and compares courtship and marriage patterns that occurred between France and the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Departing from...

The legendary music impresario (and producer of bands likeThe Yardbirds and Wham!)tells his life story in a series of mesmerisingly candid vignettes.Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom: Lessons from a Dissolute Lifeis the book Simon Napier-Bell's fans have always...

Black Vinyl White Powder is the definitive story of five decades of British Pop - now in paperbackWhether penning hits for Dusty Springfield, discovering Marc Bolan or managing a series of stellar acts ranging from the Yardbirds to Wham! - Simon...

From the author of Twitter's Medieval Death Bot comes Unfortunate Ends: On Murder and Misadventure in Medieval England, an illuminating collection of in-depth looks at the most interesting cases from medieval coroners' rolls.Thomas, son of Henry...

Nubia, the often overlooked southern neighbour of Egypt, has been home to groups of vibrant and adaptive peoples for millennia. This book explores the Nubians' religious, social, economic and cultural histories, from their nomadic origins during...

According to legend, the English landscape - so calm on the surface - is really the Devil's work. Cloven Country tells of rocks hurled into place and valleys carved out by infernal labour. The Devil's hideous strength laid down great...

Sub Culture explores the crucial role of the submarine in modern history, its contribution to scientific progress and maritime exploration, and how it has been portrayed in art, literature, fantasy and film. Ranging from the American Civil War to the...

As Nelson Mandela said, 'a nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.' Shadowland tells the sometimes inspiring, often painful stories of Germany's prisoners, and thereby shines new...

This book tells two stories about the full-length mirror. One story, through time and space, crisscrosses the globe to introduce a broad range of historical actors: kings and slaves, artists and writers, merchants and craftsmen, courtesans and commoners...

This is the first culinary history of a truly remarkable fish. Elisabeth Townsend follows cod around the globe, showing how its pursuit began with the Vikings, and exploring its influence on human affairs ever since. The book looks at the different ways...

For this book, fifteen distinguished historians were given a deceptively simple task: identify their choice for the worst military leader in history and then explain why theirs is the worst.From the clueless Conrad von Htzendorf and George A. Custer to...

Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual, and art-historical sources, Karen Eva Carr...

In The Middle Ages and the Movies, eminent historian Robert Bartlett takes a fresh, cogent look at how our view of medieval history has been shaped by eight significant films of the twentieth century. The book ranges from the concoction of sex and...

Suspended between sea and sky, battered by the waves and the wind, lighthouses mark the battlelines between the elements. They guard the boundaries between the solid human world and the primordial chaos of the waters; between stability and instability;...

Our penchant for keeping houseplants is an ancient practice dating back to the Pharaohs. House Plants explores the stories behind the plants we bring home and how they were transformed from wild plants into members of our households.A billion-dollar...

Although postcards are usually associated with cheeky seaside tableaus and banal holiday pleasantries, they are made possible by sophisticated industries and institutions, from printers to postal services. When they were invented postcards established...

Now available in B-format paperback, Miracles of Our Own Making is a historical overview of magic in the British Isles, from the ancient peoples of Britain to the rich and cosmopolitan landscape of contemporary paganism. We explore the beliefs of the...

This book examines those who wore glasses through history, art and literature, from the green emerald through which Emperor Nero watched gladiator fights to Benjamin Franklin's homemade bifocals, and from Marilyn Monroe's cat-eye glasses to Emma Bovary...

This book addresses a simple question: why were the Anglo-Saxons obsessed with monsters, many of which did not exist? Drawing on literature and art, theology and a wealth of first-hand evidence, Basilisks and Beowulf reveals a people huddled at the edge...

Avian Illuminations examines the many roles birds have played in human society, from food, messengers, deities and pets, to omens, muses, timekeepers, custodians, hunting companions, decorative motifs and, most importantly, embodiments of our aspirations...