This is an extremely wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey of colonization from its origins to the post-colonial world. Original and lively, it offers the student:* a wide focus featuring Africa, America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Japan and the USSR* an interpretation drawn from cultural and social history, with sections on myth, literature, film and philosophy* constant reference to implications for the present world situation* a comprehensive synthesis of t...

The soldiers' 'football match' and the unofficial ceasefire of Christmas 1914 has become a legend of the Great War, but fraternization between enemy troops was actually widespread. In winter 1914, after months of marching, soldiers on both fronts began to dig trenches, and the war became a battle of attrition in which young men faced each other across what was often only a few yards of the muddy, bombed landscape called No Man's Land. Trapped in this devastation the soldiers of both armies...

In History and Revolution, a group of respected historians confronts the conservative, revisionist trends in historical enquiry that have been dominant in the last twenty years. Ranging from an exploration of the English, French, and Russian revolutions and their treatment by revisionist historiography, to the debates and themes arising from attempts to downplay revolution's role in history, History and Revolution also engages with several prominent revisionist historians...

A first-hand account of World War I by a nineteen-year-old Englishman who led a platoon into the carnage of the Battle of the Somme.While researching his excellent earlier book: Veterans of World War I, author Richard Van Emden encountered a fascinating personality of that long-ago conflict. After witnessing German naval attacks on British civilians, Norman Collins enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders of the 51st Highland Division, even though he was under ...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—NewsweekSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all timeIn this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 th...

The international million copy bestseller recounting the epic turning point of the WW2______________In October 1942, an officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town . . . Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'.The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination and its citizens endured unimaginable hardship as a result. But the eventual victory of the...

"Readers cannot but be provoked and stimulated by this splendidly iconoclastic and refreshing book."—Andrew Porter, New York Times Book ReviewThe Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultur...

Today, 1913 is inevitably viewed through the lens of 1914: as the last year before a war that would shatter the global economic order and tear Europe apart, undermining its global pre-eminence. Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is reduced to its most frivolous features -- last summers in grand aristocratic residences -- or its most destructive ones: the unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of revolution, violence in the Balkans.In...

“A page-turner”: The biography of a soldier, politician, and leader of the French people, as controversial and complex as he was courageous (The New York Times Book Review).No leader of modern times was more uniquely patriotic than Charles de Gaulle. As founder and first president of the Fifth Republic, General de Gaulle saw himself as “carrying France on [his] shoulders.”In his twenties, he fought for his country in the trenches and at the epic ba...

Post liberation Paris – an epoch charged with political and conflicting emotions. Liberation was greeted with joy but marked by recriminations and the trauma of purges. The feverish intellectual arguments of the young took place amidst the mundane reality of hunger and fuel shortages. This is a stunning historical account of one of the most stimulating periods in twentieth century French history.

In this sweeping history, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how globally dominant empires—or hyperpowers—rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliant chapter-length studies, she examines the most powerful cultures in history—from the ancient empires of Persia and China to the recent global empires of England and the United States—and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise.Chua's analysis uncovers a fascinating historical patte...

The definitive account of the Great War and a national bestseller from eminent military historian John Keegan2018 marks the centenary of the First World War – the war that created the modern world. It destroyed a century of relative peace and prosperity and saw a continent at the height of its success descend into slaughter. It unleashed both the demons of the twentieth century - political hatred, military destruction and mass death - and the ideas which continue t...