All books

Mary Beard · 2015

Mary Beard asks how a small Italian town became a world power, and why Rome still shapes the way we think about politics.

Tom Holland · 2003

The fall of the Roman Republic told as a gripping political thriller, from Marius and Sulla to Caesar and Augustus.

Tom Holland · 2005

The rise of the Persian Empire and its wars with the Greeks, told from both sides of the Aegean.

Stacy Schiff · 2010

Stacy Schiff strips away centuries of legend to find the shrewd ruler behind the most famous queen of the ancient world.

Barbara W. Tuchman · 1978

Plague, war and schism: Barbara Tuchman's panoramic portrait of Europe's most calamitous century, seen through one French nobleman's life.

Dan Jones · 2012

Dan Jones tells the story of the dynasty that ruled England for more than two centuries, full of wars, rebellions and family feuds.

Dan Jones · 2017

From humble guardians of pilgrims to bankers of kings, then destroyed in a single wave of arrests: the true story of the Knights Templar.

Thomas Asbridge · 2010

A balanced, sweeping history of the wars for the Holy Land, told from both the Christian and the Muslim side.

Jack Weatherford · 2004

Jack Weatherford argues that the Mongol Empire did far more than conquer: it connected East and West and helped shape the modern world.

Stephen Greenblatt · 2011

How a book hunter's discovery of a lost Roman poem in 1417 helped carry ancient ideas into the Renaissance.

Charles C. Mann · 2011

Charles C. Mann traces how Columbus's voyages set off an exchange of crops, animals, diseases and people that remade the whole planet.

Simon Schama · 1989

Simon Schama's dazzling, unsettling chronicle of the French Revolution, from the twilight of the old regime to the Terror.

Andrew Roberts · 2014

Andrew Roberts's full-scale biography of Napoleon, built on the emperor's own vast correspondence.

Robert K. Massie · 1980

Robert K. Massie's grand biography of the giant tsar who dragged Russia westward and built a new capital on the Baltic.

Charles C. Mann · 2005

The Americas before Columbus were far more populous and sophisticated than most of us were taught. Charles C. Mann explains why.

David McCullough · 2005

David McCullough follows Washington's ragged army through the single year that nearly lost, then saved, the American Revolution.

James M. McPherson · 1988

The classic one-volume history of the American Civil War era, from the road to secession through the end of the war.

Doris Kearns Goodwin · 2005

How Abraham Lincoln brought his former political rivals into his cabinet and led a divided nation through civil war.

Stephen E. Ambrose · 1996

Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the expedition across the continent, told as a great American adventure.

S. C. Gwynne · 2010

The rise and fall of the Comanche, the most powerful tribe on the southern Plains, and of their last great leader, Quanah Parker.

David Grann · 2017

In 1920s Oklahoma, members of the oil-rich Osage Nation were being murdered. David Grann uncovers who killed them, and why.

Isabel Wilkerson · 2010

Three lives tell the story of the millions of Black Americans who left the South for northern and western cities in the twentieth century.

Erik Larson · 2003

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the architect who built it and the murderer who used it as his hunting ground.

David McCullough · 1977

David McCullough's epic account of the decades-long struggle to cut a canal through Panama, from French failure to American triumph.

David McCullough · 2015

Two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, teach themselves to fly and change the world.

Barbara W. Tuchman · 1962

The opening month of the First World War, told hour by hour, as Europe's plans collide with reality and the long stalemate begins.

Christopher Clark · 2012

How did a murder in Sarajevo drag a whole continent into war? A gripping, even-handed look at the road to 1914.

Erik Larson · 2015

The final voyage of the Lusitania in 1915, told through passengers, a U-boat captain and secret intelligence, with mounting, page-turning tension.

William L. Shirer · 1960

A monumental history of Nazi Germany, from Hitler's rise to the regime's collapse, written by an American journalist who reported from Berlin.

Antony Beevor · 2012

The whole of the Second World War in one volume, from Europe to the Pacific, told through strategy and the experiences of ordinary people.

Antony Beevor · 1998

The battle that turned the tide on the Eastern Front, told through generals' decisions and the brutal experience of soldiers and civilians.

Stephen E. Ambrose · 1992

One company of American paratroopers, from training camp to D-Day, Bastogne and the end of the war in Europe.

Laura Hillenbrand · 2010

An Olympic runner becomes a bomber crewman, survives weeks adrift in the Pacific and endures prison camps: an extraordinary true story.

Erik Larson · 2020

Churchill's first year as prime minister, as Britain faces the Blitz, seen through his family, his advisers and private diaries.

Erik Larson · 2011

An American ambassador and his daughter arrive in Hitler's Berlin in 1933 and slowly realise what the new regime truly is.

Anne Frank · 1947

The diary Anne Frank kept while hiding from Nazi persecution in Amsterdam: honest, observant and profoundly moving.

Elie Wiesel · 1960 (English edition)

Elie Wiesel's short, searing memoir of deportation and survival in the Nazi camps as a teenage boy with his father.

David McCullough · 2001

The life of America's second president, his partnership with Abigail and his long rivalry and friendship with Thomas Jefferson.

Ron Chernow · 2004

From Caribbean orphan to architect of America's financial system: the dramatic life of Alexander Hamilton, told in full.

Ron Chernow · 2017

A full portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union's victorious general and a president who fought for Reconstruction.

David McCullough · 1992

The unlikely rise of Harry S. Truman, from Missouri farm and small business to the presidency at the close of the Second World War.

Andrew Roberts · 2018

A full, single-volume life of Winston Churchill, from Victorian boyhood through wartime leadership to his final years.

Robert K. Massie · 2011

A minor German princess becomes empress of Russia: the remarkable life and reign of Catherine the Great.

Walter Isaacson · 2017

The restless curiosity of Leonardo da Vinci, explored through his art, inventions and thousands of notebook pages.

Walter Isaacson · 2003

Printer, scientist, writer, diplomat and founder: the many lives of Benjamin Franklin, told with energy and wit.

Robert K. Massie · 1967

The last tsar of Russia, his empress and their son's illness: a tragic family story at the heart of the Russian Revolution.

Jared Diamond · 1997

Why did some societies conquer others? A bold, wide-ranging argument about geography, farming and disease across human history.

Yuval Noah Harari · 2014 (English edition)

The whole human story in one book, from our early ancestors to the modern world, told with provocative big ideas.

Peter Frankopan · 2015

World history recentred on the lands linking East and West, where trade, faith and empire have met for thousands of years.

Paul Kennedy · 1987

Five centuries of great-power rivalry, and an influential argument about how economic strength shapes military success.

Herodotus · c. 430 BC

The first great work of Western history: Herodotus on the Persian Wars, and the peoples, customs and wonders of his world.

Thucydides · c. 400 BC

An Athenian general's account of the long war between Athens and Sparta: a foundational work of political and military history.

Suetonius · c. AD 121

Gossipy, vivid ancient biographies of Rome's rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, full of scandal and personal detail.

Marcus Aurelius · c. AD 170–180

The private reflections of a Roman emperor on duty, mortality and self-control: a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy.

Sun Tzu · c. 5th century BC

The ancient Chinese classic on strategy, deception and leadership, attributed to Sun Tzu and still widely read today.

Niccolò Machiavelli · 1532

Machiavelli's notorious short guide to gaining and keeping power, written in Renaissance Italy and debated ever since.

Edward Gibbon · 1776–1789

Edward Gibbon's monumental, elegantly ironic history of Rome's long decline, from the second century to the fall of Constantinople.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay · 1787–1788

The essays written to persuade Americans to adopt the Constitution, explaining how and why the new government was designed.

Frederick Douglass · 1845

Frederick Douglass's own account of his life in slavery, his self-education and his path to freedom: powerful and essential.