Social & Cultural History Books

We are a nation of crisp obsessives. Squashed into sandwiches on our lunch breaks and torn-open as centrepieces on pub tables, we buy tens of millions of packets every single day. But how did the humble potato snack become a natio…

In this groundbreaking book, renowned global economist David McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and the awesome power of money: what it is, how it works and why it matters. Money is an epic, breathlessly entertaining journey across …

In the years following his disappearance, George Mallory was elevated into an all-British hero - handsome, charismatic and daring, he was the 'Galahad' of Everest, who had died while taking on the ultimate challenge. But he was al…

Overturn everything you knew about history's greatest minds in this raucous and hilarious book, where it turns out there's a finer line between "genius" and "idiot" than we've previously known. As Albert Einstein almost certainly …

Since the discovery of the wreck of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance on the bed of the Antarctic ocean, the world has been enthralled anew by one of the greatest stories of all time. Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow…

The world is full of ruins. From the Colosseum of Rome to the crumbling suburbs of Detroit, the vine-wreathed temples of the Maya to the shell-pocked buildings of Bakhmut and Gaza. Each of these ruins has a different history, but …

The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor, and above all else integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women …

Think of a place where you can stand at the intersection of Christian and Arab cultures, at the crossroads of the British, Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian empires; a place marked by the struggle between fascism and communis…

1930s Europe - as the Roaring Twenties wind down and the world rumbles towards war, the great minds of the time have other concerns. Jean-Paul Sartre waits anxiously in a Parisian café for his first date with no-show Simone de Bea…

As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enoug…

Named a Top 100 Must-Read Book of the Year by Time and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker. Winner of the 2024 Writers' Prize for Nonfiction. Shortlisted for the Inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction. Longlisted for the RSL…

By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies the elite, uber educated faction of the Baby Boom generation had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies preoccupation with money, work, and the l…

Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, a magisterial new history of the ancient world told, for the very first time, through women.For centuries, men have been writ…

At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four m…

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook bring you an alphabetical miscellany, taking on some of history’s best and most bizarre moments. Charge forth against the traitors of the American Revolution, journey through Baghdad to discover t…

For nearly 60 years Mr George Lucas led a double life. A mild-mannered civil servant by day, by night he was a fixture of London's colourful underground gay scene - a twilight world of petty crime, louche pubs and public toilets. …

By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima, this chain of events culminates in a young man finding himself trapped in a rapid on …

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-d…

What can the fall of Rome teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist, both experts in their field, investigateOver the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, sudd…

Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, tells the stories of four Chinese women striving for a better future in an unequal society. From June, who dreams of going to university rather than raising pigs, to Sam, forced into h…

From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, the epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, culminating in Captain James Cook's death. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as …

People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or …

DURING THE AGE OF DISCOVERY, in the autumn of 1550, a little-known public servant in the Venetian government, Giovambattista Ramusio, anonymously published Navigationi et Viaggi (Journeys and Navigations). Containing a wealth of …

In Nostalgia, historian Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illnes…

Far more than just a faint echo of the past, Ireland’s fairy forts are still vibrantly alive. The traditions connected to them are so powerful that, even today, people rarely interfere with Irish fairy forts or fairy trees. They a…

A Short History of the World in 50 Animals provides a new perspective on the grand sweep of our planet’s making, taking readers from the time of the dinosaurs to the time of Dolly, the first cloned mammal. This book will include a…

There is not just one story of silk. In silk is science, history and mythology. In silk is the future.Aarathi Prasad’s Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world fo…

The history of the Middle Ages is typically the story of the rich and powerful, but archaeology represents another way of interrogating our history. By using cutting-edge science to examine human remains and burials, it is possibl…

September 1613. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England’s great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is ‘tormented’ with violent convulsions.Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating deat…

An essential guide to one of the world’s most remarkable, and often misunderstood, cities by the author of Why the Dutch Are Different. When Ben Coates injures his leg and needs to rebuild his strength by walking, he finds himself…