Long before recorded history, men, women and children had been seized by conquering tribes and nations to be employed or traded as slaves. Greeks, Romans, Vikings and Arabs were among the earliest of many peoples involved in the slave trade, and across Africa the buying and selling of slaves was widespread. There was, at the time, nothing unusual in...

'We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.' - W. Somerset Maugham The Victorian era boasted the glory of the Empire and the grandeur that Empire afforded, it saw huge technological advances in civil engineering and transport, mass urbanisation and social change, as well as still-treasured...

The Real Beatrix Potter is a fascinating and revealing biography of one of the world's most cherished children's authors. Beatrix Potter's famous little white books have enchanted generations of young readers who adored the characters she created and of course her own distinctive illustrations. Born into a typically repressed Victorian family it was...

A HISTORY OF THE MEDICINES WE TAKE gives a lively account of the development of medicines from traces of herbs found with the remains of Neanderthal man, to prescriptions written on clay tablets from Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, to pure drugs extracted from plants in the nineteenth century to the latest biotechnology antibody products. The...

“When everyone had had plenty to eat and drink they called for the gladiators. The moment anyone’s throat was cut, they clapped their hands in pleasure. And it sometimes even turned out that someone had specified in their will that the most beautiful women he had purchased were to fight each other….” – Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters With their...

In early October 1942 the German Sixth Army realised that it had one last chance to break through the Soviet lines and capture Stalingrad before exhaustion and the Russian winter set in. Stalingrad examines this last attempt by the Germans to win Stalingrad and how the Red Army managed to cling on against the odds, marking the turning point of the war on...

On New Year’s Day 1940, the people of Britain looked back on the first four months of the Second World War with a sort of puzzled unease. Wartime life was nothing like what they had imagined. Unlike the First World War there was no fighting on the Western Front. Indeed, there was no Western Front. There had been no major air attacks. Four days into the war...

The moving biography of Lt. Col. William Norman Reed, a World War II fighter ace who fought with the Flying Tigers and died in defense of the nation he loved.

Bill Reed had it all--brains, looks, athleticism, courage, and a talent for leadership. After a challenging childhood in Depression-era Iowa, Reed joined the US Army Air Corps, but the outbreak of...

This is the first title of a highly detailed yet accessible two-volume history of America's involvement in Vietnam, drawing on cutting-edge research and top secret material to tell the full story from the end of World War II through to the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

In Good Faith is the first of a two-volume, accessible narrative history of America's...

The dramatic story of Noor Inayat Khan, secret agent for the British in occupied France.

During the critical summer months of 1943, Noor Inayat Khan was the only wireless operator transmitting secret messages from Nazi-occupied France to the Special Operations Executive in England. She was a most unlikely spy. As the daughter of an Indian mystic, raised in...

In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the 'Florence of the Elbe'. Bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won?

From the history of the city to the attack itself...

Twenty-nine award-winning textile artists from across the United States honor the centennial anniversary of 19th Amendment. Inspiring quilts reflect the long and complicated history of women's suffrage and recognizes many of the unsung suffragists, including African American women instrumental in the struggle to gain women's voting rights. All royalties...

The history of unemployment and many concepts surrounding it remain a mystery to many Americans. Frank Stricker believes we need to understand this essential thread in our shared past. American Unemployment is an introduction for everyone that takes aim at misinformation, willful deceptions, and popular myths to set the record straight:

-Workers do not...

Success is a slippery, fickle thing. How much is down to luck, being in the right place at the right time or knowing the right people, and how much to innate talent? Why are some people less successful than others? Taking as its frame of reference the stories of fifty inventors who lost out on the fame that their genius might otherwise have merited, The...

Parting and Enduring is a dialectical effort to understand some consequences of the principle of evolution that threaten the survival of mankind very clearly and directly.

Although it has become commonplace to say and hear that humanity faces global perils, we try to explain how true this actually is by identifying these dangers.

For instance, we believe that...

England, 1527, King Henry seeks a divorce from his first wife, Katherine, who can't give him the male heir he desires. He sets his eyes on the younger, more daring Anne Boleyn, triggering a complex, triangular exchange of personal narratives from the protagonists, who remain entwined for the ensuing nine years. Each struggle in their pursuits of power...

What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for the coming challenges of climate change. But it also sits at the epicenter of a massive economic collapse that many of its citizens are still struggling to...

Sir Francis Bryan

The life of Henry VIII's most notorious ambassador, who, unlike many who served the second Tudor monarch, managed to keep his head.

ir Francis Bryan was Henry VIII's most notorious ambassador and one of his closest companions. Bryan was a man of many talents; jouster, poet, rake and hell-raiser, gambler, soldier, sailor and diplomat. He...

High Heels & Beetle Crushers

This compelling memoir of a girl in uniform reveals the first-hand experience of the social attitudes towards women in post-war Britain.

A compelling memoir of post-war Britain. Jackie Skingley grew up with limited career choices but joining the Women’s Royal Army Corps offered her a different life, living and working in a...

The Caribbean Irish explores the little known fact that the Irish were amongst the earliest settlers in the Caribbean. They became colonisers, planters and merchants living in the British West Indies between 1620 and 1800 but the majority of them arrived as indentured servants. This book explores their lives and poses the question, were they really slaves?...

How Ebony educated African Americans about their own history

From its launch in 1945, Ebony magazine was politically and socially influential. However, the magazine also played an important role in educating millions of African Americans about their past.

Guided by the pen of Lerone Bennett Jr., the magazine’s senior editor and in-house historian, Ebony ...

By the time Loretto discovered the cache of WWII letters, her father had been dead almost 50 years. She'd accepted she would never know him. All that changed when she decided to type his 500+ letters for her siblings. With each letter she heard her father's voice. With each place she visited and each person she met, the 50 years without him melted away and...

'Totally gripping'-- Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘Pilecki is perhaps one of the greatest unsung heroes of the second world war ... this insightful book is likely to be the definitive version of this extraordinary life’ -- Economist

Would you sacrifice yourself to save thousands of others?

In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground...