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Not too many people realize that the story of Dracula was based on a really sadistic ruler in Romania. Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad the Third, was a merciless despot who tried to make an example out of his opponents by impaling them and displaying them in public. He also enjoyed bathing in dead people’s blood and did some other gross, inhumane things. He was the terror of Eastern Europe for many years.

Nominado al "Premio Nacional Kyorlenko Heorhij Stepanovych 2019" y ganador del "Mejor informe periodístico sobre el desastre de Chernobyl" nombrado por Kyiv Today, esta serie de libros revela los eventos del peor accidente nuclear, también representado en la mundialmente famosa serie de TV de drama Chernobyl 2019, con detalles más profundos.

A memoir of a child's forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin's Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordinary hardship. In April of 1940, six-year-old Ida woke to the sound of pounding on her door. Soviet soldiers forcibly packed her and her mother onto a train with thousands of their neighbors and deported them to remote Siberia, leaving them stranded to survive the brutal winter in subhuman conditions.

After decades of concealing the full account of her experiences, Holocaust survivor Beatrice Sonders (Basia Gadzuik) writes her story of survival and courage in the face of ultimate horrors.

Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author’s grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community - an entire culture - that was annihilated in the Holocaust.

Alexander Domokos wrote this memoir of his years during and after the Second World War with two purposes in mind. He wanted to allow his daughter a glimpse into his past and to enlighten others about the tragedy of his homeland, Hungary.

All'alba del 26 aprile 1986, all'01:23:40, Aleksandr Akimov preme l'interruttore per l'arresto di emergenza del quarto reattore nucleare di Chernobyl. Quel gesto costringe alla permanente evacuazione di una città e sancisce l'inizio di un disastro nucleare che ha segnato la storia del mondo e il destino dell'Unione Sovietica. Seguiranno decenni di storie contraddittorie, esagerate e inesatte.

Courageous Women: Stories of Czech Women in the Fight for Freedom uncovers the untold stories of remarkable women who played pivotal roles in Czechoslovakia's national revolution and fought tirelessly for independence. In this captivating book, historian and translator Kytka Hilmarova presents a collection of biographical sketches that shed light on the courageous and often overlooked heroines who shaped the course of history.

Jak vypadala krajina 13. století? A kdo byli její obyvatelé? Kolika let se dožívali, na jaké nemoci trpěli? Jak spolu vycházeli čeští a němečtí kolonisté? Poznáme významné stavby na našem území a budeme sledovat počátky gotiky, zakládání měst a jejich rozkvět. Byli naši předci tak nároční na bydlení a odívání, jako jsme my? Co znamenaly chrámy pro tehdejší lidi a jaká byla jejich spiritualita? Jako úlohu přičítali vzdělání, jak se bavili a jak milovali? Na tyto i další otázky odpovídá historik Vlastimil Vondruška.

Co víme o 12. století? Třeba to, že se v Evropě začal pomocí destilace vyrábět alkohol, byla pravděpodobně sepsána Kosmova kronika česká, byly založeny řády Templářů a Premonstrátů, vznikl gotický sloh, byl vynalezen střelný prach a také proběhla první doložená chřipková epidemie. Jak se ale obecně žilo lidem ve 12. století? To popisuje první část cyklu Život ve staletích. I když dílo vychází z dostupných historických pramenů a odráží současný stav poznání, nejde o učebnici.

Zaskočilo vás ruské válečné tažení na Ukrajinu? Chcete uvést do kontextu, ale nemáte rádi sáhodlouhá vědecká pojednání? Pak je pro vás kniha Petra Holého tím pravým úvodem do aktuálního problému. Autor si v ní nebere servítky a svižně a s humorem rozebírá, proč je Putin v Rusku tak oblíbený, v čem selhal Západ, jak se liší přístupy světových velmocí i jaká jsou možná východiska tohoto konfliktu. „Rusko by hrozně chtělo překreslovat s ostatními velmocemi mapu Evropy, ale má zásadní problém.

In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.

In June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Lyudmila Pavlichenko left her university studies and ignored the offer of a position as a nurse to become one of Soviet Russia's 2,000 female snipers. Less than a year later, she had 309 recorded kills, including 29 enemy sniper kills. She was withdrawn from active duty after being injured. She was also regarded as a key heroic figure for the war effort. 

These are the memoirs of the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, abridged for this production in order to focus on the mass deportations and systematic killings of Turkey's Armenian population. This work is a renowned primary source for this Armenian Genocide, a crime since recognized by 29 countries. Ambassador Morgenthau offers detailed profiles of the Turkish leaders with whom he interacts, finding that they are responsible for a "death warrant to a whole race".

Michał Ogórek meticulously recreates the picture of Poland that used to be drawn during the particular periods of the 100 years of Polish independence: Poland of Piłsudski, Rydz-Śmigły, Bierut, Gomułka, Gierek, Jaruzelski, Wałęsa, and Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński. The more worshiped each of the leaders were, the more painful their demise usually was. The magnitude of the leaders' worship caused people to cry out of emotion, and later out of disappointment and anger. But this book will only make you cry out of laughter.

You may have heard about him: Attila the Hun. Let's discover who this individual actually was and why he has such a bad track record of being a callous, aggressive conqueror in the first millennium after Christ. Attila the Hun was the ruler of the Huns from the year 434 till his death in the month of March in the year 453. Also, he was the leader of a tribal realm which consisted mainly of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans and Bulgars, to name a few, in Central Europe and in Eastern Europe.

Over the course of just 200 years, the Ottoman Empire grew from a small, obscure Anatolian state into the most powerful Muslim nation in the world, controlling vast swathes of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. Within the empire, science, medicine, technology, and art flourished, and the Ottoman army became one of the most feared and efficient fighting forces in existence. Then came a period of gradual decline.

The horrid acts of Auschwitz concentration camp really need no introduction. It is nearly impossible to discuss this topic with someone who does not know at least a few points about it. The acts, if applied to any other context, may be restricted to the older populous, but even children grow up knowing about the genocide of World War II.

Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas, irrevocably changing both their new lands and the ones they left behind. Their immigration fostered an idea of the "land of the free", yet more than a third returned home again. In a groundbreaking study, Tara Zahra brilliantly explores the deeper story of this unprecedented movement of people.

An epic, popular history of Ukraine, from an acclaimed, front-line war reporter, directly countering Putin’s attempted erasure of Ukrainian identity. “Likely the best-known Ukrainian after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy” (Der Spiegel), Illia Ponomarenko, author of I Will Show You How It Was...