History & Archaeology Books

A gripping royal saga of charmed lives in a changing world.The Jaipurs were India's mid-century golden couple; its answer to the Kennedys, or Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Jai and Ayesha, as they were known to friends like Frank Sinatra, Truman...

In late-eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power, changing the political map forever. Enter the legendary Maharajah Ranjit Singh, whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout northwestern India...

Lessons from History is a joyful romp through the obscurest parts of the past. The annals have been scoured for overlooked figures and events that nonetheless made an impact, and within these pages they are brought hilariously and often poignantly back...

To build up a future, you have to know the past.' Otto Frank, 1967 In late 1940s Amsterdam, when Otto Frank unwrapped his daughter Anne's diary with trembling hands and began to read the first pages, he discovered a side to his daughter...

A sweeping overview of world affairs and, especially having come across the name of William Yandell Elliott, Professor of Politics at Harvard through the first half of the 20th century. Sean found that Elliott had created a kindergarten of Anglo-American...

States of Liberation examines gay persecution and liberation in both East and West Germany during the Cold War.States of Liberation traces the paths of gay men in East and West Germany from the violent aftermath of the Second World War to the thundering...

A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite...

How Robespierre's career and legacy embody the dangerous contradictions of democracy.Maximilien Robespierre (17581794) is arguably the most controversial and contradictory figure of the French Revolution, inspiring passionate debate like no other...

A unique look at Thomas Mann's intellectual and political transformation during the crucial years of his exile in the United States.In September 1938, Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize winning author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, fled Nazi...

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh's climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America's experience in Vietnam.On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could...

A groundbreaking work of scholarship that sheds critical new light on the urban renewal of Paris under Napoleon IIIIn the mid-nineteenth century, Napoleon III and his prefect, Georges-Eugne Haussmann, adapted Paris to the requirements of industrial...

Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints journeyed to the Hebrides and Scotland's Atlantic shore. They sought spiritual solitude in remote places, but their mission was also to spread the word of God to the peoples of Scotland. Columba was the most...

This unique and delightful map of mainland Scotland and the Hebrides, from the collection of the National Library of Scotland, is a magnificent pictorial map of Scotland. Not just annotated with beautiful calligraphy, it also includes dozens of vignettes...

People are drawn to the harbours and boats of Scotland whether they have a seafaring background or not. Why do boats take on different shapes as you follow the complex shorelines of islands and mainland? And why do the sails they carry appear to be so...

A gripping true story of wartime espionage.Dundee, 1937. When housewife Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan's frequent trips to Nazi Germany, she had no idea that she was about to be drawn into an international web of...

Discover one of the Scottish Enlightenment's brightest stars.Among the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, the name of James Hutton is overlooked. Yet his Theory of the Earth revolutionised the way we think about how our planet was formed and...

In 2000, archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a sword. An unprepossessing length of rusty metal, it had been left on a shelf for thirty years. But Paul had a suspicion that the sword had more to tell than appeared, so he sent it for further tests...

'Coffin roads' along which bodies were carried for burial are a marked feature of the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and islands - many are now popular walking and cycling routes. This book journeys along eight coffin roads to...

Throughout the world there exists an enduring fascination with our ancestry who we are and where we come from. Nowhere is this more evident than with the generations of Scots who over the centuries have left their native Scotland to create a new life in...

Scotland is a land of many languages including Gaelic, Pictish, Brythonic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Modern English among them. The result is an often bewildering series of overlapping layers of place-names, difficult at times to understand and even...

In 1944, Glasgow received one of the greatest gifts ever made to any city in the world: a collection of over 6,000 artworks of many types spanning centuries and civilisations. The benefactors were Glasgow-born shipping magnate Sir William Burrell and...

The inspiring story of a Highland estate, which was rescued from the catastrophic effects of decades of human interference, and is now one of the most successful examples of rewilding in the UK.In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge...

INCLUDES HUNDREDS OF NEW AND EXPANDED ENTRIESFrom 'Aald Rock' to 'Zeenty-teenty', A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable is an unputdownable gallimaufry of curious items embracing sayings, put-downs, insults, mottos, traditions, legends, folklore,...

The written history and archaeological records of Central Scotland takes us back to Pictish times some 5,000 years ago. The geology of the area stretches back a further 400 million years.The oldest rocks are found near Lesmahagow and in the Pentland...

Proverbs, once described as 'the wisdom of many and the wit of one', offer unique insights the way of life and the social mores of past generations.This book features an introduction which explores the role of proverbs in Scottish culture and over 1,000...

On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752 a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent travelling to nearby Duror where he's evicting farm tenants to make way for his relatives...

The Great Tapestry of Scotland is one of the most ambitious community arts projects ever undertaken. The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, it was created by a team of over a...

The Forth Bridge was the greatest engineering feat the Victorian world had ever seen and remains, to this day, one of the great achievements of mankind. The Forth Bridge: A Picture History, tells the dramatic story of its construction using rare archive...

Vienna is unique amongst world capitals in its consistent international importance over the centuries. From the ascent of the Habsburgs as Europe's leading dynasty to the Congress of Vienna, which reordered Europe after Napoleon, to bridge- building...

Few aspects of Scottish history inspire as fervent an interest as the wars with England. The exploits of not one, but two, national heroes William Wallace and Robert Bruce have excited the attention of a host of novelists, filmmakers, artists and...

It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city's two...

The Declaration of Arbroath, 6 April, 1320, is one of the most remarkable documents to have been produced anywhere in medieval Europe. Signed by 51 Scottish nobles, it confirms Scotland's status as an independent sovereign state with the right...

All over the world traditional tales were told at the fireside until their place came to be taken by books, newspapers, radio and television. A.J. Bruford and D.A. MacDonald present an entertaining collection of the oral tales that have been passed down...

Mull and Iona are two of the most visited islands in Scotland, and have played a central role in the history of the country. As the cradle of Christianity in Scotland, Iona has been a place of pilgrimage for almost 1,500 years and was a beacon of...

When the Clyde Ran Red paints a vivid picture of the heady days when revolution was in the air on Clydeside. Through the bitter strike at the huge Singer Sewing machine plant in Clydebank in 1911, Bloody Friday in Glasgow's George Square in 1919, the...

Scotland has had a uniquely important military history over the last five centuries. Conflict with England in the 16th century, Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century, 20th-century defences and the two world wars, as well as the Cold War, all resulted...

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, out of which the Soviet Union was born, was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century. The collapse of the Tsarist regime and the failure of the Kerensky Provisional Government nearly led to the...

Hadrian's Wall is the largest, most spectacular and one of the most enigmatic historical monument in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running 73 miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least 26 miles down the...

In August 1956 a young shepherd, his wife, two-year-old daughter and ten-day-old son sat huddled in a small boat on Loch Monar in Ross-shire as a storm raged around them. They were bound for a tiny, remote cottage at the western end of the loch which was...

The Outer Hebrides lie 40 miles to the west of mainland Scotland, forming a barrier to the North Atlantic. Culturally distinct from early prehistory, the islands contain a wealth of historical and archaeological monuments, including the standing stones...

Orkney lies only 20 miles north of mainland Scotland, yet for many centuries its culture was more Scandanavian than Scottish. Strong westerly winds account for the scarcity of trees on Orkney and also for the tradition of well-constructed stone...

Vast Expanses is a cultural, environmental and geopolitical history that examines the relationship between humans and oceans, reaching back across geological and evolutionary time and exploring different cultures around the globe.Our ancient connections...

In Teatimes: A World Tour food historian Helen Saberi takes us on a journey into the fascinating history of teatimes, from elegant afternoon teas, hearty high teas and delicious cream teas, to cricket and tennis teas, the funeral teas of Britain and much...

Isaac Newton is generally regarded as one of the greatest scientists in history, yet the spectrum of his interests was much broader than that of a contemporary scientist. He was deeply involved in alchemical, religious, and biblical studies, and in the...

This is ancient Greece - but not as we know it. Few people today appreciate that Greek civilisation was spread across the Middle East, and that there were Greek cities in the foothills of the Himalayas. This book tells the story of the Greeks outside...

Tea has a rich and well-documented past. The beverage originated in Asia long before making its way to seventeenth-century London, where it became an exotic, highly sought-after commodity. Over the subsequent two centuries, tea's powerful psychoactive...

The Goths are truly a 'lost civilization'. Sweeping down from the north, ancient Gothic tribes sacked the imperial city of Rome and set in motion the decline and fall of the western Roman Empire. Ostrogothic and Visigothic kings ruled over Italy and...

Cuba is a rare and fascinating place. In a world where revolutionary socialism seems an almost quaint reminder of the Cold War, the island remains one of the few nations on the planet guided by a Communist party, still committed to fighting imperialism,...