From Nero's nagging mother (whom he found especially annoying after taking her as his lover) to Catherine's stable of studs (not of the equine variety), here is a wickedly delightful look at the most scandalous royal doings you never ...

As the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland began to peter out and the insurgent cause was clearly lost, Michael Dwyer and a band of loyal followers took to the Wicklow Mountains from where they continued to conduct a campaign of resistance and ...

A "revelatory" (Wall Street Journal) romp through the intimate details of Victorian life, by an historian who has cheerfully endured them all. Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiab...

The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart.Drawing widely on previously unpublished royal letters and diaries, made p...

Spanning 500 years of British history, a revealing look at the secret lives of some great (and not-so-great) Britons, courtesy of one of the world's most engaging royal historians  Beleaguered by scandal, betrayed by faithless spouse...

Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris's world-famous Hôtel Ritz—a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity; dangerous liaisons...

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Paris we know today was born, the vision of two extraordinary men: the endlessly ambitious Emperor Napoleon III and his unstoppable accomplice, Baron Haussmann. This is the vivid and engrossing accou...

The Bridge at Andau is James A. Michener at his most gripping. His classic nonfiction account of a doomed uprising is as searing and unforgettable as any of his bestselling novels. For five brief, glorious days in the autumn of 1956, ...

A comprehensive and thrilling history of the Vikings for fans of the History Channel series From Harald Bluetooth to Cnut the Great, the feared seamen and plunderers of the Viking Age ruled Norway, Sweden, and Denmark but roamed as fa...

The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London, which, in only a few decades, grew from a compact Regency town into the largest city the world had ever seen. Technology-railwa...

The Stuart monarchy brought England and Scotland into one realm, albeit one still marked by political divisions that echo to this day. More importantly, perhaps, the Stuart era was marked by the cruelty of civil war, and the killing o...

An authoritative survey of the history of English-speaking peoples throughout the world combines intriguing, closely observed biographical profiles-of Alfred the Great, Victoria, Joan of Arc, Lincoln, and other notables-with an acco...

A magisterial account of the worst disasters to strike humankind—the Great Irish Potato Famine—conveyed as lyrical narrative history from the acclaimed author of The Great MortalityIn this masterful, comprehensive account of the I...

A Chernobyl survivor and award-winning historian "mercilessly chronicles the absurdities of the Soviet system" in this "vividly empathetic" account of the worst nuclear accident in history (The Wall Street Journal)...

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Plantagenets chronicles the next chapter in British history—the historical backdrop for Game of ThronesThe crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth ce...

A funny, raucous, and delightfully dirty 900-year history of the royal marriages of Europe's most famous-and infamous-monarchs. Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love- and almost everything to do with...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAcclaimed historian G. J. Meyer provides a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty—and some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. In 1485, Henry Tudor, whose claim to the English throne was so...

Woven from the words of the inhabitants of a small Suffolk village in the 1960s, Akenfield is a masterpiece of twentieth-century English literature, a scrupulously observed and deeply affecting portrait of a place and people and a no...

Arlette Farge's Le Goût de l'archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily ...

An erudite romp through the intimate details of life in Tudor England, "Goodman's latest…is a revelation" (New York Times Book Review).On the heels of her triumphant How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman travels even further...

A New York Times Notable Book of 2013A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the YearWorld War I evokes images of the trenches: grinding, halting battles that sacrificed millions of lives for no territory or visible gain. Yet the fir...

Russia's sheer size has made it difficult to mobilize resources and to govern effectively, especially given its harsh climate, vast and vulnerable borders, and the diversity of its people. In this Very Short Introduction, Geoffrey Hos...

In the winter of 1910, the river that brought life to Paris quickly became a force of destruction.  Torrential rainfall saturated the soil, and faulty engineering created a perfect storm of conditions that soon drowned Parisian stre...

"Dan Jones has an enviable gift for telling a dramatic story while at the same time inviting us to consider serious topics like liberty and the seeds of representative government." —Antonia FraserFrom the New York Times bestsellin...

Drawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, King and Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that sparked World War I In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: G...

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, after more than ten years of a new parliament and the new census of 2011. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside ...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters, Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport's masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eye-witness accounts left by foreign nationals who s...

For two hundred years after the French Revolution, the Republican tradition celebrated the execution of princes and aristocrats, defending the Terror that the Revolution inflicted upon on its enemies. But recent decades have brought a...

Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms...

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident— unsettling and unexplained causes of death, a strange final ...