History & Archaeology Books

They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the...

Has Europe's extraordinary postwar recovery limped to an end? It would seem so. The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and former Soviet Bloc countries have experienced ethnic or religious disturbances, sometimes violent. Greece, Ireland, and Spain...

The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism tells the gripping story of perhaps the most significant political force of our time through the lives and careers of six leading figures at the heart of the movement. David Farber traces the history of...

This is a sweeping and powerful narrative history of the Jewish people from biblical times to today. Based on the latest scholarship and richly illustrated, it is the most authoritative and accessible chronicle of the Jewish experience available. Michael...

This is the first publication in English of Pierre Briant's classic short history of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian empire, from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Eschewing a conventional biographical focus, this is the only book in any...

The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found. In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of...

In "The Axe and the Oath", one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people. Writing for general readers, Robert Fossier vividly describes how these...

This book brings together some of today's most exciting scholars of Irish history to chart the pivotal events in the history of modern Ireland while providing fresh perspectives on topics ranging from colonialism and nationalism to political violence,...

An authoritative and comprehensive intellectual biography of the author of the Divine Comedy. For all that has been written about the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) remains the best guide to his own life and work...

The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book...

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. Life Exposed is the...

Examines "Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx--heirs of the Enlightenment who embodied its highest ideals about progress--and shows how their thoughts, over time and in the hands of their followers and...

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the...

Machiavelli praised his military genius. European royalty sought out his secret elixir against poison. His life inspired Mozart's first opera, while for centuries poets and playwrights recited bloody, romantic tales of his victories, defeats, intrigues,...

Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating! The Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the...

The American military base on the island of Diego Garcia is one of the most strategically important and secretive U.S. military installations outside the United States. Located near the remote center of the Indian Ocean and accessible only by military...

A masterful new account of old regime France by one of the world's most prominent political philosophers France before 1789 traces the historical origins of France's National Constituent Assembly of 1789, providing a vivid portrait of...

A dramatic intellectual biography of Victorian jurist Travers Twiss, who provided the legal justification for the creation of the brutal Congo Free State.Eminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (18091897)...

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now...

Displayed on European stages from 1810 to 1815 as the Hottentot Venus, Sara Baartman was one of the most famous women of her day, and also one of the least known. As the Hottentot Venus, she was seen by Westerners as alluring and primitive, a reflection...

Amazons--fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world--were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a...

In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world. The result was a massive...

"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."--New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."--Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a...

The French government's 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an...

An essential introduction to Josephus's momentous war narrativeThe Jewish War is Josephus's superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin...

During the spring of 1933, Stalin's police rounded up nearly one hundred thousand people as part of the Soviet regime's "cleansing" of Moscow and Leningrad and deported them to Siberia. Many of the victims were sent to labor camps, but ten thousand of...

From humble beginnings, Rome became perhaps the greatest intercontinental power in the world. Why did this historic city become so much more influential than its neighbor, nearby Latium, which was peopled by more or less the same stock? Over the years,...

A groundbreaking new history of how the Vietnam War thwarted U.S. liberal ambitions in the developing world and at home in the 1960sAt the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of...

In 2009, Harper's Magazine sent war-crimes expert Lawrence Douglas to Munich to cover the last chapter of the lengthiest case ever to arise from the Holocaust: the trial of eighty-nine-year-old John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk's legal odyssey began in 1975,...

A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's Russia.Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured...

Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood." "Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life." Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state...

Grand political accomplishment and artistic productivity were the hallmarks of Augustus Caesar's reign (31 B.C. to A.D. 14), which has served as a powerful model of achievement for societies throughout Western history. Although much research has been...

In 99 colour maps, this atlas creates the entire world of the Greeks and Romans from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent and deep into North Africa. It spans the territory of more than 75 modern countries. Since the 1880s, all attempts to map...

The essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic characterisitics and its political and social functions, over the past five centuries. The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as...

On War is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832, it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of...

What turns rich nations into great powers? How do wealthy countries begin extending their influence abroad? These questions are vital to an understanding of the emergence of a new power - a source of instability in international politics. In this text,...

Life today for citizens of the developed world is safer, easier, and healthier than for any other people in history thanks to modern medicine, science, technology, and intelligence. So why is an epidemic of fear sweeping America? The answer, according to...

Princeton's Great Persian Book of Kings presents the first comprehensive examination of a beautifully decorated yet relatively unknown manuscript of the Shahnama (Book of Kings), created in 158990 in the flourishing cultural center of Shiraz. Held by...

"The Great Starvation Experiment is wide-ranging, weaving progress in the war into the day-to-day suffering of the hungry volunteers." -Saint Paul Pioneer Press"Fascinating . . ." -Minneapolis Star TribuneNear the end of World War II, thirty-six...

Tales from 5000 Years of Chinese History covers the history of China in an anecdotal fashion that makes each event come alive. Entertaining and informative, this ambitious narrative will enlighten all those who wish to know more about the chronicles of...

Tales from Five Thousand Years of Chinese History, consisting of two volumes, is a collection of stories arranged in chronological order, covering the period from ancient times to the pre-Opium-War Qing Dynasty. Open these pages to discover the great...

The U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook provides doctrinal guidance, techniques, and procedures governing the use of interrogators as human intelligence collection agents in support of a commander's intelligence needs. It outlines the...

Giants is a moving and inspirational story of survival, of a troupe of seven dwarf siblings, whose story starts like a fairy tale, before moving into the darkest moments of their history; the darkest moments of modern history. At a time when the phrase...

In this compilation from Plutarch's Greek Lives, James Romm gathers the material of greatest historical significance from fifteen biographies, ranging from Theseus in earliest times to Phocion in the late fourthcentury BCE. While preserving the outlines...

What is it about Australian history? Students dismiss the subject for being boring while politicians and concerned parents fret over their lack of historical knowledge. The classroom has become the battleground of the 'history wars', yet no-one ever asks...

Dates have an important role in their arid homeland of the Middle East, where they are a dietary staple. The fruit can be consumed fresh or dried, as a snack or a dessert, and are even thought to have aphrodisiac qualities. In Dates: A Global History,...

Through a wide variety of key documents - most of which appear in English for the first time here - this sourcebook reveals the origins, significance, and consequences of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the first great, and catastrophic, pan-European...

William of Rubruck was a Franciscan friar who wrote the first great travel book about Asia. In 1253-55 he made the journey from the Holy Land to the court of the Great Khan Mngke at Qaraqorum in Mongolia and back again. William was interested in all that...