Social & Cultural History Books

A spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history one with ripple effects that still shape our society todayIn 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freef…

The history of humanity is one of devastating, once-in-a-thousand-year events: rising seas that make land uninhabitable, decades-long droughts, civilisational collapse, epidemics like the Black Death and the Spanish Flu that reduc…

A landmark history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity, but is rapidly vanishing in our time.';What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its ess…

Joe Dunthorne never met his great-grandfather Siegfried: an eccentric Jewish scientist who escaped Nazi Berlin in the 1930s and snuck back under cover of night to rescue the family heirlooms. Decades later, Siegfried wrote about h…

On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of the crew, which…

For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from t…

How we search for meaning in our futures, as revealed by the divine, occult or supernatural, from ancient prophets to the end of days. What will happen to us next? From the earliest beginnings of human civilization, people have se…

New York City entered 1986 as a city reborn, with record profits on Wall Street sending waves of money splashing across Manhattan and bringing a once-bankrupt and reeling city back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city divid…

Golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth: Ancient Greece gave us democracy and the rule of the law; out of Abbasid Baghdad came al…

In 1960s Paris, the high-life and the low-life go hand in hand. It is a time of glamour, sports cars, casinos and night clubs with a cast of actresses, petty criminals, high-level gangsters and compromised politicians. And with Fr…

What's exciting about a piece of bread 4,000 years old? Or some pots of paint abandoned in the eruption at Pompeii? Why should we be bothered with the distant past anyway? What's the point?The life, art and literature of ancient G…

Murakami tells the true story behind an act of terrorism that turned an average Monday morning into a national disaster. In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands we…

Are intellectuals merely the servants of special interests or do they have a larger responsibility? In these wide-ranging essays, one of our most brilliant and fiercely independent public thinkers addresses this question with extr…

In the ancient world the magicians of Egypt were considered the best. But was magic harmless fun, heartfelt hope, or something darker? Whether you needed a love charm, a chat with your dead wife, or the ability to fly like a bird,…

Bestselling author Philip Matyszak explores how the Greeks and Romans used magic, who performed it – and why. Magic was everywhere in the ancient world. The supernatural abounded, turning flowers into fruit and caterpillars into b…

Twentieth-century Japanese printmaking—especially the refined art of shin hanga (new prints)—has long remained underappreciated. This expanded and revised edition of Shin Hanga. New Prints of Japan (1900–1960) sets out to change t…

A step-by-step guide to becoming and being a samurai. It is 1615, and the Samurai, Japan’s elite fighting class, are at the zenith of their powers. Trained in every manner of combat, from sword-fighting and archery to karate and j…

A book of Greek myths with a twist! Readers step into the shoes of a legendary hero to solve mazes, crack codes and untangle the riddles that bring lavishly illustrated retellings of classic tales to life. Readers take on their ve…

A new take on Southeast Asia’s complex history, expertly told through art objects and cultural artefacts dating from the Neolithic Age to the present. Southeast Asia is home to numerous world heritage sites. Through engaging texts…

The word ‘samurai’ stands for ideals of courage, honour, self-sacrifice and loyalty. Yet much of the common understanding is imaginative fiction. This book explores the concept from medieval reality, through early modern changes, …

In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, …

This lavishly illustrated book provides a unique insight into the evolution of mapmaking and the science behind it, from the stone age to the digital age. Britain’s leading cartographic author takes us on a historical journey thro…

The women of Nagyrév are desperate. They're abused by their husbands. They are feeding their newborns to livestock. At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a car…

With this beautifully illustrated compendium, explore 100 diverse arcane tools and writings said to hold the key to the mysteries of the universe. Delve into a captivating exploration of ancient and diverse symbols. Symbols carry …

For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to chan…

Few forces have shaped our world as powerfully - or as secretly - as mafias. Groups such as La Cosa Nostra, the Medellin Cartel, New York's Five Families, the Japanese yakuza and Russian vory are notorious, endlessly covered in ne…

Trump’s second term, even more than his first, is often called ‘unprecedented’. But history shows that Trump and his policies are as American as apple pie…Much of what Donald Trump does seems maverick and even mad.His actions and …

The history of Europe told through twenty-nine key borders that define the past, present and future of our continent. Europe's internal borders have rarely been 'natural'; they have more often been created by accident or force. In…

A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for yea…

If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and scienc…