In this effortlessly erudite account, Russell Shorto traces the evolution of one of the world's greatest cities. From the building of its first canals in the 1300s, through the brutal struggle for Dutch independence and its golden age as the capital of a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals of liberalism are under siege, Shorto provides an ever-surprising, intellectually entertaining story of Amsterdam. He also weaves in his own experiences of his adopted home. In...

The extraordinary adventure-filled story of how England came to own Manhattan in the seventeenth century

In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation.

A landmark history of the war that firmly places the First World War in the context of imperialism and gives due weight to the role of non-Europeans in the conflict.

James Walvin offers a new and an original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of the historic end to the slave trade in April 1807. John Newton (1725-1807), author of 'Amazing Grace', was a slave captain who marshalled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition.

A guide to Egyptian mythology that explores how the ancient Nile-dwellers explained the world around them. It delves into the origins of life, the creation and evolution of the world, and the reigns of the gods on earth, before introducing us to the manifestations of Egypts deities in the natural environment.

As well as vividly exploring the tales, the author brings her expertise in the archaeology of the Iron Age and particularly shamanism to bear on the mythical worlds she describes, with evidence as diverse as the Gundestrup Cauldron and the famous bog bodies. She also asks how the myths survived the Christianization of Europe.