This book offers a comprehensive thousand-year history of the land, people, society, culture and economy of Hungary, from its nebulous origins in the Ural Mountains to the elections of 1988. It tells above all the thrilling story of a people which became a great power in the region and then fought against - and was invaded by - Ottomans, Germans and Soviets. The Hungarian people preserved nevertheless a continuous individuality through its Ural-born language and a specifically Hungaro-Euro...

**From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower“A dazzling history of Western ideas.”—The Economist“Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal“[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe**Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenome...

What is Europe? Firstly, of course, it is a continent made up of countless disparate peoples, races and nations, and governed by different ideas, philosophies, religions and attitudes. Nonetheless, it has a common thread of history running through it, stitching the lands and peoples of its past and present together into one fabric and held together by the continent's great institutions, such as the Church of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, individual monarchies, trade orga...

Adam Zamoyski first wrote his history of Poland two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. This substantially revised and updated edition sets the Soviet era in the context of the rise, fall and remarkable rebirth of an indomitable nation.In 1797, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland among themselves, rewriting Polish history to show that they had brought much-needed civilisation to a primitive backwater. But the country they wiped off the map had been one of Europe’s...

The “explosive” (The New York Times) bestseller that “redefined the history of the twentieth century” (The Washington Post )This shocking book was the first account to tell the whole truth about Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II, and it remains the definitive account of that era. It sparked a firestorm of controversy both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Award-winning journalist John Cornwell has also included in this seminal work...

Spanning the divide between Europe and Asia, Russia is a multi-ethnic empire with a huge territory, strategically placed and abundantly provided with natural resources. But Russia's territory has a harsh climate, is cut off from most maritime contact with the outside world, and has open and vulnerable land frontiers. It has therefore had to devote much of its wealth to the armed forces, and the sheer size of the empire has made it difficult to mobilise resources and to governeffectively, e...

Building on A People’s History of the United States, this radical world history captures the broad sweep of human history from the perspective of struggling classes.An “indispensable volume” on class and capitalism throughout the ages—for readers reckoning with the history they were taught and history as it truly was (Howard Zinn)From the earliest human societies to the Holy Roman Empire, from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, ...

Celebrated historian John Hirst offers a fascinating exploration of the qualities that made Europe a world-changing civilisation.The Shortest History of Europe begins with a rapid overview of European civilisation, describing its birth from an unlikely mixture of classical learning, Christianity and German warrior culture. Over the centuries, this unstable blend produced highly distinctive characters pious knights and belligerent popes, romantics spouting folklore and revolutionaries imita...

The image of Poland has once again been impressed on European consciousness. Norman Davies provides a key to understanding the modern Polish crisis in this lucid and authoritative description of the nation's history. Beginning with the period since 1945, he travels back in time to highlight the long-term themes and traditions which have influenced present attitudes.His evocative account reveals Poland as the heart of Europe in more than the geographical sense. It is a country where Europe'...

Accessible to students, tourists and general readers alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past. The book traces not only the political history of Russia, but also develop...

First published in 1996, A History of Ukraine quickly became the authoritative account of the evolution of Europe's second largest country. In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Paul Robert Magocsi examines recent developments in the country's history and uses new scholarship in order to expand our conception of the Ukrainian historical narrative.New chapters deal with the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and new research on the pre-...

• Fascinating, fact-filled writing that delivers hundreds of years in the life of the European continent• Terrific supplementary reading for AP History students