Modern History (18th–20th Century) Books

Something has gone really wrong in Britain. Our economy has tanked, our freedoms are shrinking, and social divisions are growing.Our politicians seem most interested in their own careers, and much of the media only make things wor…

'Spain is different,' proclaimed the Franco regime in the 1940s, keen to attract foreign tourists. For the most part, the world has agreed. From the end of its 'glorious empire' in 1898 to the dazzling World Cup victory in 2010, t…

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annih…

John F. Kennedy’s life is promoted by sentimental and careless myth-makers as pure legend. But a sinister shadow lies across it.His death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much…

Drawing from the people who lived it, Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two. And then faltered. Timothy Garton Ash, our greatest writer about Europe, has spent a lifetime studying Europe and…

We have entered a new Cold War. The contest between America and China is global and unbridgeable, and it encompasses all major instruments of statecraft - economic, political and military.It has its tinder box: Taiwan. And both pr…

An epic history of the ‘other’ Europe, a place of conflict and coexistence, of faith and folklore. ‘Do not rush to bid farewell to eastern Europe until reading this book. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this very …

An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.

The best overall survey of the politics, regional rivalries and economics of the contemporary Arab world' - Washington Post. Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. This no…

The Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan ruli…

This landmark global study makes us rethink what happened when the Cold War ended and our present era was born. The world changed dramatically as the Berlin Wall fell and protest turned to massacre in Tiananmen Square. Now, with d…

The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning...Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've re…

Stunning book about the right stuff in the wrong war. As a child, Robert Mason dreamed of levitating. As a young man, he dreamed of flying helicopters - and the U.S.Army gave him his chance. They sent him to Vietnam where, between…

On 1 May 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool. The passengers - including a record number of children and infants - were anxious. Germany had declar…

Jonathan Raban's enthralling journey into the history of the Great Plains of Montana - the least populated, most uncharted region of the United States - to uncover the heart and soul of the country. Bringing to life the extraordin…

Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years int…

The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response.Drawi…

In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic.Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands of …

Tasked with storming mountain strongholds in the desert. Trained to hunt down the world's most wanted terrorists.  This is the extraordinary story of 22 SAS. The history of the modern SAS is one of the great successes of post-war …

Read this prize-winning historian's "immersive" ( New York Times) account of the famous writers who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism They were an astonishing group: glamo…

No journalist is better situated to reckon with the psychology of war than New York Times bestselling author David Finkel. In Thank You for Your Service he weaves a masterly, compelling narrative out of the troubling stories of a …

The astonishing year when German democracy faced crisis and near destruction.1923 was one of the most remarkable years of modern European history. In January, France and Belgium militarily occupied Germany's economic heartland, th…

From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes…

From the acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones, an intimate excavation of life in one of the world's oldest civilizations at a time of convulsive changeDrawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter …

In January 1918, as World War I raged on, a new and terrifying virus began to spread across the globe. In three successive waves, from 1918 to 1919, influenza killed more than 50 million people world-wide. German soldiers termed i…

Intimate, complex, long-lasting: the links between Ireland and US presidents extend much further and deeper than JFK. From Andrew Jackson in 1829 to Woodrow Wilson in 1913 and Joe Biden in 2021, Ireland's sway in the White House i…

One of the great historians of our age asks: how far can a single leader alter the course of history?The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and…

A Nation Is Born celebrates a formative period in the history of the Irish state: the fifteen years during which we emerged from the rubble of wars and violence and set up as a fledgling country while establishing a diplomatic pre…

A searing, landmark study of the British Empire that lays bare its pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Caroline Elkins reveals the dark heart of…

From the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country's past - and how they can inform its present. No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has chan…