For most of its modern history, India was fated to be on the receiving end of cultural influence from other civilisations. But this isn't the complete story. A full millennium earlier, India's major cultural exports - religion, art, technology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, language and literature - were shaping civilisations, traveling as far as Afghanistan in the West and Japan in the East.

Out of India came pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and ma...

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK | AN INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history' Financial Times

'Vast, learned and timely work' Sunday Times

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From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development-and demise-of civilisations across time.

When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive...

A fascinating and surprising history of the world told through the lines people have drawn on maps, by the 'charming and outstandingly nerdish' author of The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything.

People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way....

From the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer's tale of a naïf getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city.

Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city's notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family's neighbourhood. Over two decades of bec...

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

A TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Powerfully argued... Fascinating and pacy' Sunday Times, Book of the Week

'Superbly written... sure to please readers of Yuval Noah Harari or Rutger Bregman' The Times

'Full of amazing facts' Observer

'The book shines when it brings cutting-edge science to bear' Financial Times

'A dizzying range of material' The Economist

'A humbling story for humankind' Spectator

Challenges some of the gr...

Kurds, known to many to be fearless people with history and cultural heritage going way beyond the borders of a land, are often badly or minimally represented in the media. So, who are these people, and what is their deal?

'This vital history shatters many myths about the Nazi genocide . . . . surprising . . . provocative . . . fizzes with ideas. Even if you think you know the subject, you'll probably find something here to make you think' Sunday Times

'Erudite...remarkable' The Observer

'Outstanding' The Telegraph

An authoritative, revelatory new history of the Holocaust, from one of the leading scholars of his generation

The Holocaust is much-discussed, much-memorialized and much-portrayed. But there are majo...

A riveting historical investigation and family memoir that reveals the untold story of Bep Voskuijl, the young Dutch woman who was Anne Frank’s closest confidante during the time she spent in the Secret Annex.

History belongs to the heroes. But to get the full story, sometimes you have to ask the side characters.

The lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Henry VIII and Queen Victoria fill bookshelves and fascinate scholars all over the world. But little attention is given to the ferret who posed for the renaissance master, the servant who oversaw the Tudor's toilet time, or the famous horse who thrilled the miserable old monarch.

These supporting cast members have been waiting in the wings for too long, and ...