This book is a selection of 40 articles from the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography, dealing with 42 men and women whose careers, in one way or another, were deeply involved with the Easter rising of 1916. The biographies selected...

Adolf Hitler spent 1924 away from society and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. Behind bars in a prison near Munich, Hitler passed the year with deep reading and intensive writing, a year of slowly walking gravel paths while...

Charles Darwin has become one of the most important men in history. The quiet, unsure polymath who avoided confrontation, ensconced in his family home at Down House in Kent, was also a revolutionary who developed his idea of Natural Selection in...

A general introduction to the classical world from its origins to the fall of the Roman Empire. The book focuses on questions of how we know about Classical civilization from archaeology and history; deals with the Mycenaean era and the world of Myth and...

The Jewish religion is one of the major faiths of the world yet one of the least understood. In a wide-ranging and accessible guide for the general reader Rabbi Naftali Brawer outlines the major themes and history of over 5,000 years of Jewish faith from...

This wide-ranging book explores the diversity of esoteric and occult beliefs. Neo-Paganism is one of the fastest-growing new religions in the western world where witchcraft or Wicca, Druidry, and Urban Shamanism are thriving. Alongside this there has...

Here are the stories of the ten most popular equations of all time as voted for by readers of Physics World, including - accessibly described here for the first time - the favourite equation of all, Euler's equation. Each is an equation that captures...

The Revolution of 1917 remains controversial though much is known about its key political players. Roy Bainton tells the compelling, human side, via the poignant stories told to him by ordinary families, their hopes transformed into fear. Lenin? Yes, he...

This is a story about you. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be.It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes...

From the dawn of history to the decline of the Celtic Tiger - how Ireland has been shaped over the centuries. Ireland has been shaped by many things over the centuries: geography, war, the fight for liberty. A Brief History of Ireland is the perfect...

Using wide-ranging evidence, Martyn Whittock shines a light on Britain in the Middle Ages, bringing it vividly to life in this fascinating new portrait that brings together the everyday and the extraordinary. Thus we glimpse 11th-century rural society...

In this compelling, powerful book, highly respected writer and commentator Jack Holland sets out to answer a daunting question: how do you explain the oppression and brutalization of half the world's population by the other half, throughout history? The...

Poisons permeate our world. They are in the environment, the workplace, the home. They are in food, our favourite whiskey, medicine, well water. They have been used to cure disease as well as to incapacitate and kill. They smooth wrinkles, block pain,...

A thought-provoking and important book that raises essential issues crucial not only for understanding our past but also the present day. In this panoramic history, Jeremy Black tells how slavery was first developed in the ancient world, and reaches all...

Despite being relatively brief, this very readable history covers environmental, political, social, economic, cultural and artistic elements, and is very open to regional variations and to the extent that the history of the peninsula and of its political...

The birth pangs of Nazism grew out of the death agony of the Kaiser's Germany. Defeat in World War I and a narrow escape from Communist revolution brought not peace but five chaotic years (1918-1923) of civil war, assassination, plots, putsches and...

A history of the cult of the ancient Druids, exploring who they really were and what role they played in the Celtic world. The author's interpretation of the facts is based on both archaeological and etymological findings. Peter Berresford Ellis sifts...

Most people's concept of the 'end of the world' comes from the book of Revelation. Alternative apocalypses can be found in the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia, in ancient Hindu scriptures and Norse myths. Today, there are an estimated 25 million...

Bamber Gascoigne's classic book tells of the most fascinating period of Indian history, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the country was ruled by the extraordinarily talented dynasty of emperors known to European travellers as 'the Great...

A wonderfully concise and readable, yet comprehensive, history of the Mediterranean Sea, the perfect companion for any visitor -- or indeed, anyone compelled to stay at home. 'The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean.'...