Social & Cultural History Books

John Ruskin overturned Victorian society's ideas about art and architecture, arguing that ancient buildings must be conserved for their deep, mystical links with the past and that creative design is essential - not for financial g…

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash…

What if you had a vision that something terrible was going to happen? A train crash, a department store fire, an assassination. What if you could share your vision, and prevent a disaster? In 1966, John Barker, a British psychia…

An instant bestseller and one of the most celebrated history books of the year, Femina reveals the power and influence of medieval women who have been written out of our history. From royalty and religion to fame and fury, see the…

Journey through the imagined islands of history.  Gathered in this book are over twenty islands that have decidedly human origins, whether they are the products of imagination, deception or simply human error. They are phantoms, f…

The little-known story of Hitler's war on modern art and the mentally ill. In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works by schizophrenic patients that …

Great cities are complex, chaotic and colossal. These are cities that dominate the world stage and define eras; where ideas flourish, revolutions are born and history is made.Through ten unique cities, from the founding of ancient…

Original, knowledgeable and endlessly entertaining, France: An Adventure History is an unforgettable journey through France from the first century BC to the present day. Drawn from countless new discoveries and thirty years of exp…

A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier-shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war.  In 1873 the people of Labette…

Every 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 events the best way she k…

The late 1890s saw the start of a 'heroic age' in polar exploration. This book tells the story of three men who were to embody the spirit of the time - driven by courage, determination and ambition, to be the first to discover the…

From bra burning and body hair to Beyonce and body positivity, feminism has come a long way. The illustrated story of the women's movement, Badly Behaved Women is a compelling and entertaining journey through the four waves of fem…

Revolution! Conflict! Gluttony! In this eclectic book of food history, Tom Nealon takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste ar…

The iconic futurist artist and designer Syd Mead once described science fiction as 'reality ahead of schedule'. In From Science Fiction to Science Fact, Levy explores the visions of the writers, futurists and far-sighted inventors…

The Atlas of Great Journeys allows readers to follow in the footsteps of the most daring adventurers as they set out to explore the unknown. Fascinating original map illustrations show the world's greatest journeys, and lavishly i…

Stroll around some of the greatest cities in the world and discover what they were like a century ago at the start of the modern age. Explore 100 routes around 15 different cities at the turn of the 20th century thanks to a millio…

Take a guided tour through history and discover the most precious, iconic, and celebrated objects ever created. Revered, admired, and protected - every country and culture has certain artefacts that are prized above all others. Cu…

This wonderful publication provides a unique visual and historical record of the West Cork Railway as rail enthusiast and historian Chris Larkin warmly remembers the lifetime of the rail system in a travelogue which allows readers…

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age…

No, they weren't 'just friends'!Queer women have been written out of history since, well, forever. 'But historians famously care about women!', said no one. From Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the seas together disguised as p…

From rivals propelling each other forwards to friends combining their talents, it's clear: often two heads are better than one. How did William and Ellen Craft work together to pull off a perilous cross-country escape from slavery…

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR AN OBSERVER BEST ART BOOK OF 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022  An illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and the sea from the award-winning author of Levi…

Revolutions hold a distinct place in the popular imagination. This may be because their rhetoric, such as 'liberty, fraternity, equality', articulates aspirations with which we identify; or because we are shocked by the destructiv…

London, Paris and New York in the eighteenth century, as today, were places where political authority, commerce and money, art and intellectual life intersected. They straddled an Atlantic world where ships powered by nothing more…

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, adults cleared their shelves in the belief that wisdom was now effortlessly accessible in their livi…

A user's guide to the future from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black holeEvery second of our lives - whether we're looking…

When Catherine Corless began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway in 2010, she could not have known where her interest in local history would lead her. Uncovering no less than 796 missing burial records of children …

Born in Dublin in 1822, Lieutenant-General John Nicholson was raised and educated in Ireland. He joined the East India Company's Bengal Army as 16-year old boy-soldier and he saw action in Afghanistan, the two Anglo-Sikh wars and …

Ireland's Suffragettes is a collection of biographical essays introducing the suffragettes who influenced Ireland's struggle for women's rights. Many of the women were political activists while others became militant suffragettes …

Our world today is as dangerous and mixed-up as it has ever been. Luckily we have Michael Burleigh to help us make sense of it.' - Mail on SundayIn Day of the Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh examines assassination …