Serhii Plokhy is Professor of History at Harvard University and a leading authority on Eastern Europe whose previous books include Lost Kingdom, The Gates of Europe and The Last Empire. At the time of the Chernobyl explosion he lived behind the Iron Curtain less than 500 kilometres downstream of the damaged reactor.

Kate Manne is an assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University, having previously been a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She works in moral, social, and feminist philosophy and her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Huffington Post.

An intelligent, comprehensive and authoritate history of the Holocaust from one of our finest historians.

' The Book that really held me, in fact, obsessed me, was Rubicon ...This is narrative history at its best. Bloody and labyrinthine political intrigue and struggle, brilliant oratory, amazing feats of conquest and cruelty.' Ian McEwan, Books of the Year, GUARDIAN

A brilliant new account of the world's very first clash of civilisations between the Persians and the Greeks in 480BC.

Brian Cox is a Professor of Particle Physics and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and works at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. He is also a popular presenter on TV and radio.Jeff Forshaw is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Manchester, specializing in the physics of elementary particles. He was awarded the Institute of Physics Maxwell Medal in 1999 for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics.

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...