History

'Every generalisation that we settled forty years ago, is abandoned'As a journalist, historian and novelist born into a family that included two past presidents of the United States, Henry Adams was constantly focused on the American experiment. An...

Why Galileo's finger? Galileo, one of whose fingers is preserved in a vessel displayed in Florence, provided much of the impetus for modern science, pointing the way out of medieval ignorance. In this brilliant account of the central ideas of...

(Available after 3-20 days)A New York Times bestsellerIn this triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage...

“THE BOOK CHINA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ.” —CNN​SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by THE ECONOMIST and FINANCIAL TIMESThis “powerful and disturbing” (Bil Browder, author of Red Notice) New York Times bestseller is narrated by a man who, with his wife,...

'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks'In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and...

In the tradition of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company-all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph.Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were...

"Highly readable, incisive, precise, and even elegant." —San Francisco Chronicle"Insightful." —BusinessWeekWal-Mart isn’t just the world’s biggest company, it is probably the world’s most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate...

(Available after 3-20 days)The definitive story of the rise of Nintendo. In 1981, Nintendo of America was a one-year-old business already on the brink of failure. Its president, Mino Arakawa, was stuck with two thousand unsold arcade cabinets for a dud...

A lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture through the concept of yokai.Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan...

'The first example of non-fiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history ... it is above all a treasure trove' -- Tom HollandOne of the masterpieces of classical literature, The Histories describes how a small and quarrelsome band of...

'It's just a brute fact that we don't throw virgins into volcanoes any more. We don't execute people for shoplifting a cabbage. And we used to.'-Steven Pinker 'The idea that because things have gotten better in the past they will continue to do so in the...

(Available after 3-20 days)This “landmark” (Ibram X. Kendi) dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King transforms our understanding of the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders.To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther...

In The Persian Expedition, Xenophon, a young Athenian noble who sought his destiny abroad, provides an enthralling eyewitness account of the attempt by a Greek mercenary army - the Ten Thousand - to help Prince Cyrus overthrow his brother and take the...

(Available after April 30th, 2022)From the acclaimed author of Japan Story, this is the history of Japan, distilled into the stories of twenty remarkable individuals.The vivid and entertaining portraits in Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book...

This is a fresh and surprising account of Japan's culture from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid-nineteenth century to the present.'How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it ... Masterly...

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space.In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male...

A compelling new biography that recasts the most important European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century, famous for his alleged archconservatism, as a friend of realpolitik and reform, pursuing international peace.Metternich has a...

This inspiring memoir, now adapted for young adults, chronicles Top Chef star and Forbes and Zagat 30 Under 30 phenom Kwame Onwuachi's incredible and odds-defying fame in the food world after a tough childhood in the Bronx and Nigeria.Food was Kwame...

Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, using LEGO—which experienced one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent history—as a...

'Like nothing else you will read' Hilary MantelEvery day a beloved father dies. Every day a lover departs. Every day a woman turns forty.All three happening together brings a moment of reckoning.Medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle made sense of these...