This is a book about the amazing journey of people discovering the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, looking for traces of a small historical event against the backdrop of the ending of the Soviet Union.

At the start of the age of exploration, the North Pole was believed to be hiding a continent, a land mass warmed by the midnight sun still inspiring today’s ‘Lost World’ fantasies. In the summer of 1596, two ships departed from Amsterdam to sail by its shores. The nine-month struggle for ...

Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us.We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived. What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens?In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going.Sapiens is a thrilling account of humankind's extraordinary history - from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age - and ...

In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe, welcoming almost one million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis, but this book asks another vital que...

In Jared Diamond's follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Diamond is also the author of Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions a...

In this fully revised and updated third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower, and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Focusing their answers through the historical legacies--Confucian thought, Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen...

In the 19th century Europe changed more rapidly and radically than during any prior period. This volume offers an approach to understanding one of the most complex periods of modern history, addressing all the major issues.