From Moses to Nelson Mandela, speeches have changed the way we see the world and the way the world is shaped.The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches gathers together the world's greatest speeches, bringing together the words of over one hundred men and women. These brilliant and passionate declarations by Socrates, Robespierre, Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth I, Churchill, Washington, Pankhurst, Gandhi and many others provide a vivid glimpse of history in the making while retaining their power to move...

A unique lens through which to view the modern world: 28 insider accounts of national histories, now available in B-format paperback.

The untold story of how British-French rivalry drew the battle-lines of the modern Middle East

What did medieval people call the animals they lived and worked with? Why did they give them the names they did? This book sets out to answer these questions.

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.

They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? This title offers a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, and more.

The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. This book shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.