History

The Greek statesman Polybius (c.200–118 BC) wrote his account of the relentless growth of the Roman Empire in order to help his fellow countrymen understand how their world came to be dominated by Rome. Opening with the Punic War in 264 BC, he vividly...

Charles Darwin's seminal formulation of the theory of Evolution, On the Origin of Species continues to be as controversial today as when it was first published. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by William Bynum, and...

The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, Friedman argues, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalization - a 'flattening' of the world. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that...

"Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustrations." -Noam ChomskyOne economist has called Ha-Joon Chang "the most exciting thinker our profession has turned out in the past fifteen years." With Bad Samaritans, this provocative scholar...

The first volume of a political treatise that changed the worldOne of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in...

The second volume of a political treatise that changed the worldA vital cornerstone to Marx’s overall theory of economics, the second volume of Capital considers in depth the nature of commodity and the market-place bourgeois society. This immensely...

The third volume of a political treatise that changed the worldUnfinished at the time of Marx’s death in 1883 and first published with a preface by Frederick Engels in 1894, the third volume of Capital strives to combine the theories and concepts of the...

Two famous, firsthand accounts of the holy war in the Middle Ages translated by Caroline SmithOriginally composed in Old French, the two chronicles brought together here offer some of the most vivid and reliable accounts of the Crusades from a Western...

Eusebius's account is the only surviving historical record of the Church during its crucial first 300 years.Bishop Eusebius, a learned scholar who lived most of his life in Caesarea in Palestine, broke new ground in writing the History and provided a...

A fascinating collection of medieval Arabic travel writing in an important new translationBetween the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab explorers journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia,...

A newly updated edition of the landmark translation by one of our greatest religious scholarsSince its publication in 1962, esteemed biblical expert Géza Vermes's translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls has established itself as the authoritative standard...

Between 58 and 50 BC Caesar conquered most of the area now covered by France, Belgium and Switzerland, and twice invaded Britain. This is the record of his campaigns. Caesar's narrative offers insights into his military strategy & paints a...

'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a...

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire compresses thirteen turbulent centuries into an epic narrative shot through with insight, irony and incisive character analysis. Sceptical about Christianity, sympathetic to the barbarian invaders and...

This edition of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion offers readers Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz's celebrated translation of Cabeza de Vaca's account of the 1527 Panfilo de Narvaez expedition to North America. The dramatic narrative tells the...

Athena seized the writhing serpent and hurled it into the sky, and fixed it to the very pole of the heavens. The constellations we recognize today were first mapped by the ancient Greeks, who arranged the stars into patterns for that purpose. In the...

The centuries between 800 and 300 BC saw an explosion of new religious concepts. Their emergence is second only to man's harnessing of fire in fundamentally transforming our understanding of what it is to be human. But why did Socrates, Buddha,...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize“Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West’s principal bankers . . . Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most important, timely.” —Kirkus...

Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today."A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell." — New York TimesAfter working...

A renowned economist's classic book on capitalism in the developing world, showing how property rights are the key to overcoming poverty"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its...