The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of tombaroli -- tomb raiders -- who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers w...

A highly ambitious and lucid history of ideas from the very earliest times to the present day.'A masterpiece' NEW STATESMAN'An extraordinary new book ... This is the history of "ideas" as it has never presented before' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHIn this hugely ambitious and exciting book Peter Watson tells the history of ideas from prehistory to the present day, leading to a new way of telling the history of the world. The book begins over a m...

A compulsively readable blend of romance and drama based on actual events in Britain and France leading up to D-Day in 1944Matthew Hammond is a British military officer posted to the European theater during World War II. He sustained a serious injury on the front lines, so bad, in fact, that it cost him a lung. Now he is back in England, unable to fight, but he continues to serve his country by training new resistance fighters.One of the recruits under his c...

‘Majestic, ambitious' Literary Review_________________________________________________________________________________________We are endlessly fascinated by the French. We are fascinated by their way of life, their creativity, sophistication and self-assurance, and even their insistence that they are exceptional. But how did France become the country it is today, and what really sets it apart?Journalist and historian Peter W...

‘A breath-taking panorama’ Sunday Times‘A compelling, epic tale’ Financial TimesPeter Watson's magisterial sweep through modern German thought and culture confounds stereotypes that the world has of Germany, and Germany has of itself.From the end of the Baroque age and the death of Bach to the rise of Hitler in 1933, Germany was transformed from a poor relation among Western nations into a dominant...

There are many books that discuss the coins from specific periods of Egyptian history, but there are none that consider the coins from the whole of that history. This work aims to provide such an account, covering the currency from ancient times through the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and Ottoman periods to modern times. An important feature of the work is the illustration of a selection of about 150 coins and banknotes that represent the major types throughout that history. Adjun...

Since the problems of race relations are worldwide, the international origins and perspectives of this excellent and timely book are especially advantageous. More research has been done in the United States than elsewhere on the psychology of race relations, so it is appropriate that a plurality of the chapters of this book are by American authors--a stellar group that includes leading contributors to our contemporary knowledge of the topic. Contributors from the English-speaking Commonwea...

‘Extensive and intelligent . . . a guide to the nature of British intellectual curiosity’ SpectatorThe reign of Queen Elizabeth I ushered in an unprecedented age of exploration and discovery. Over 500 years that saw ‘the greatest expansion of ideas and knowledge the world has ever seen’, a small island nation, for centuries a cultural backwater, asserted itself as a world power.Breathtaking in scope, embracing literature, science, art, religion, ph...

‘Majestic, ambitious' Literary Review_________________________________________________________________________________________We are endlessly fascinated by the French. We are fascinated by their way of life, their creativity, sophistication and self-assurance, and even their insistence that they are exceptional. But how did France become the country it is today, and what really sets it apart?Journalist and historian Peter W...

Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, and disparate areas of interest have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing, to identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe.Intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been revealed as have the links be...

‘Extensive and intelligent . . . a guide to the nature of British intellectual curiosity’ SpectatorThe reign of Queen Elizabeth I ushered in an unprecedented age of exploration and discovery. Over 500 years that saw ‘the greatest expansion of ideas and knowledge the world has ever seen’, a small island nation, for centuries a cultural backwater, asserted itself as a world power.Breathtaking in scope, embracing literature, science, art, religion, ph...

The justification for the atomic bomb was simple: it would defeat Hitler and end the Second World War faster, saving lives. The reality was different.Fallout dismantles the conventional story of why the atom bomb was built. Peter Watson has found new documents showing that long before the Allied bomb was operational, it was clear that Germany had no atomic weapons of its own and was not likely to. The British knew this, but didn't share their knowledge wit...