History

211 BC: Hannibal's struggle against the Romans in Italy continues, but the Carthaginians have been utterly defeated on Sicily. Fleeing the island to Spain, Hanno and Aurelia are shipwrecked, and taken prisoner by local tribesmen. Unless they escape, a life of slavery and brutal treatment awaits...

Barbara Millicent Roberts was born in 1959. Her image is instantly recognizable almost anywhere in the world. She has held hundreds of jobs across the last six decades, from teen model to astronaut to movie star. She’s been adored, criticized, mocked, reinvented, memed, protested, and celebrated—sometimes all at once. Who is this remarkable woman? Well, you might know her better by her nickname: Barbie.

Michael Bergin's account of the years he and Carolyn Bessette shared—revisiting the years dramatized in FX's Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette Would she be alive today? Would we be together? Would we have been happy? Before she was Mrs. John F. Kennedy Jr. — before the...

Globally famous and yet universally misunderstood – these are the complex and utterly engrossing stories of Britain's royal women behind the public façade. Saints or sinners? Perfect princesses or difficult duchesses? Monarchy’s saviours or its destroyers? They rank among the world’s most...

Working her way up from gruelling bootcamp training to leading a drug interdiction operation seizing €700 million of cocaine from a yacht off the Kerry coast, she was a leader among men and rose to every challenge. Developing a love of the sea, Gleeson learned that to be at one with it required agility, and a willingness to change, to go with the wind – not against it. These lessons prepared her for operating without a life raft when her personal life threw her the greatest challenge of all.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Number 1 Bestseller Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many, many young women who travelled on their own, hoping for a better life. Some lived...

Family Business: Gier, Geld, Geheimnisse erzählt die Geschichten großer Familien und schillernder Dynastien. Die Schwestern Anna Dushime und Amélia Umuhire geben Einblicke in das Innere von Familien, die über Jahrzehnte oder gar Jahrhunderte Unternehmen und Imperien gelenkt haben. Denn die ganz großen Dramen der Weltgeschichte um Macht, Geld und Einfluss spielen sich nicht selten in Familien ab.

Bloomsbury presents 1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory by Richard Hargreaves, read by Charles Armstrong A unique history of the Axis powers attempt to win the Second World War in 1942, told through the eyes of those who were there. Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian...

‘A must-read for those fascinated by the decline and fall of the USSR and the emergence of a new Russia’ – Mark Galeotti, author of Forged in War 'Finely argued, carefully researched, and beautifully written' – Norman M. Naimark, author of Stalin and the Fate of Europe From the acclaimed...

Two and a half centuries. Thirteen colonies to fifty states. From Lexington to the smartphone, from the Declaration to the Dust Bowl, from Appomattox to 9/11—the full story, told in one audiobook. In July 2026, the United States marks two hundred and fifty years since the Declaration of Independence. A quarter of a millennium of revolution, war, expansion, struggle, invention, immigration, and reinvention. A story that began with thirteen colonies on the edge of an empire—and produced the most powerful country in human history.

Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect vacuum for myth and survival legends, while rival intelligence agencies and propaganda further confounded the investigations of successive historians.

Bloomsbury presents The Wise and Their Works: The Legacy of the Great Exhibition of 1851, written and read by A. N. Wilson The Wise and Their Works celebrates the 175th anniversary of the Great Exhibition in 2026. The men who inspired the Great Exhibition of 1851 - Henry Cole, Sir Robert Peel...

Major Peter Weaver's military career is remarkable for its breadth, from the Royal Tank Corps, to the infantry, but also as an engineer and on colonial and special operations. Hearing accounts of the rise of Hitler, he joined the Territorials. The outbreak of war saw him rapidly promoted...

La segunda oración de la Declaración de Independencia de Estados Unidos, escrita por Thomas Jefferson y revisada por Benjamin Franklin y John Adams, se convirtió en un credo que unió a peregrinos e inmigrantes en una sola nación. Para personas de tan diferentes orígenes y creencias, la frase resultó la definición última del bien común y del Sueño Americano.

The year opened with the Axis powers inflicting a series of disasters on the newly formed Allies: Pearl Harbor, followed by Japan's conquest of the Philippines and Southeast Asia; Rommel running unchecked in North Africa; devastating defeats of the Red Army at Kharkov, Crimea, and southern...

A true pivotal moment in American history, the Louisiana Purchase redefined the boundaries of the United States and recharted the course of its history. The story behind it transcends borders.

Paternità è una storia globale e culturale dell'essere padri: un racconto che attraversa i millenni e le nazioni per mostrarci come nel nostro passato l'amore per i figli sia stato costantemente legato alla fondazione di un'autorità; e come, a partire dal modo in cui ridefiniremo questo rapporto, dipenderà il futuro delle nostre società. Mettere al mondo un figlio non ha significato sempre essere «padre», almeno nel senso che attribuiamo noi, ai giorni nostri e in Occidente, a questo concetto.

He was the seventeenth son of a slave wife. By fifty-four, he had killed three thousand Americans on a clear blue Tuesday morning and changed the trajectory of the twenty-first century. You think you know the story of Osama bin Laden. The cave. The fatwa. The towers. The SEAL raid. You don't.

A "Best Non-Fiction to Read This Year" Selection from The New Statesman A magisterial, revisionist narrative history of the Soviet Union in its post-Stalin heyday, bringing a forgotten society to vivid life and offering a new explanation for how it suddenly collapsed. To those of us in the West...

Der gegenwärtige Krieg in der Ukraine ist ohne diese historische Last nicht zu verstehen – der erzwungene Hungertod von mehr als drei Millionen Ukrainern 1932 und 1933, Holodomor genannt, war eine der größten Katastrophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Und sie hat Folgen bis heute – Stalins »Krieg gegen die Ukraine« hat sich tief im kollektiven Bewusstsein der osteuropäischen Völker verankert.

Former CIA operations officer Robert Marro Jr. pens a gripping memoir about his close friend and confidante, the famed enigmatic exorcist, bestselling author, and Vatican insider Malachi Martin. In this riveting firsthand account, Robert Marro Jr. pulls back the veil on the life of the...

An immersive history of our coasts and the people who have shaped them The coast means something different to everyone. It’s a place of pleasure and reckless pursuits, of fishing, fearless endeavours and a crashing, rugged beauty. The coast is, and always has been, our first line of defence...

In 1985 John Corcoran, a garda informer within the ranks of the Cork IRA, was abducted and brutally executed by the IRA. No one has ever been charged with his murder, but for decades, speculation was rife that gardaí of the highest rank allowed Corcoran – a father of eight – to be murdered...

Among the figures of early Roman history, few stand out quite like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a man who to his contemporaries stood as the very image of the Roman Vir Bous (the Good Man). His life, whether viewed through the lens of ancient writers or treated as something of a foundational myth, has shaped Western thought surrounding civic duty and the restraint of power for more than 2,000 years.

Bloomsbury presents Prey by Graham Hurley, read by Andrew Cullum. A breathtaking thriller combining espionage and combat, Prey is the story of the brutal battle for the skies during the darkest days of World War II. 1943. The war is turning against the Third Reich, but the Luftwaffe are eagerly...