This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in self-imposed seclusion.

New York Times Bestseller

"Dolnick brilliantly re-creates the circumstances that made possible one of the most audacious frauds of the 20th century. And in doing so Dolnick plumbs the nature of fraud itself . . . an incomparable page turner." --Boston Globe

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren man...

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER ‘The most important book of the year’  Daily Mail The brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world’s foremost political writers

This brilliant new book explores the lives of eight generations of the greatest kings and queens that this country has ever seen, and the worst. The Plantagenets – their story is the story of Britain.

Combining crystal-clear explanations of the laws of the universe with basic exercises (including essential equations and maths), this book covers the minimum that readers should master.

One of the world's foremost economists presents a major new analysis of the crisis in modern capitalism, and how to reform it. Advocates going further than taxing wealth, with a renewed attention to the origins of wealth itself.

At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science and technology to improve, extend and protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher's terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to any European in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the world war. How Auschwitz grew and mutat...

The past is a foreign country - this is your guide, from the bestselling author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval EnglandWe think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden age.