Essays

`The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace.' Edward Gibbon called The Histories an `immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest...

'Do you know it, do you remember it, the drives, the attitudes, the terrors and, yes, the joys?' Thus Steinbeck introduces his collection of poignant and hard-hitting dispatches for the New York Herald Tribune when the Second World War was at its height...

They re lurking in museums, graveyards, and private homes around the world. Their stories have inspired countless horror movies, reality TV shows, campfire tales, books, and even chain emails. They re cursed objects, and in order to unleash a wave of...

Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelerated worldwide circulations of people, goods, capital, and...

First published in 1870, The Wild Garden challenged the prevailing garden style of the day and advocated a naturalistic style, in which hardy plants, both native and exotic, are arranged in groupings that mimic wild landscapes. Thanks to Robinson's...

Traditionally known as the Father of History, the Greek writer Herodotus(c. 484-420 BC), was the first man to tell a story in prose on the scale of the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY. His subject is the war between the Persians and the Greeks but, in order to...

Providing a series of fascinating views of Imperial Rome, The Letters of the Younger Pliny also offer one of the fullest self-portraits to survive from classical times. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Betty Radice.A...

Late antiquity: decline or transformation, conflict or interaction? Late antiquity is the period (c.300 - c.800) in which barbarian invasions ended Roman Empire in Western Europe by the fifth century and Arab invasions ended Roman rule over the...

A fresh, provocative history that renews our understanding of France in the world through short, incisive essays ranging from prehistoric frescoes to Coco Chanel to the terrorist attacks of 2015. Bringing together an impressive group...

The Annals of St-Bertin, covering the years 830 to 882, are the main narrative source for the Carolingian world in the ninth century. This richly-annotated translation by a leading British specialist makes these Carolingian histories accessible in...

'Two things alone I long for: first, that when I die I may leave the Roman people free...and second, that each person's fate may reflect the way he has behaved towards his country.' Cicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a...

The latest no-f**ks-given guide from New York Times bestselling author of the international sensation The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, Get Your Sh*t Together, and You Do YouDo you waste time overthinking things you can't do anything about?...

The most important written work in English before the Norman Conquest, newly translated.Made up of annals written in the monasteries of Winchester, Canterbury, Peterborough, Abingdon, and Worcester, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle marks the beginning of the...

Maurice O'Sullivan was born on the Great Blasket in 1904, and 'Twenty Years A-Growing' tells the story of his youth and of a way of life which belonged to the Middle Ages. He wrote for his own pleasure and for the entertainment of his friends, without...

One of the Most Important Books on Civil Rights, Race, and Freedom Ever Written. "A groundbreaking challenge to white supremacy." -The New York Times A classic work of American literature, African-American history, and sociology by W. E. B. Du Bois, The...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsCommended for National Book Awards (Nonfiction) 2020.Book InformationISBN 9780814255995Author Jerald WalkerFormat PaperbackPage Count 152Imprint Ohio State University...

For two hundred years after the French Revolution, the Republican tradition celebrated the execution of princes and aristocrats, defending the Terror that the Revolution inflicted upon on its enemies. But recent decades have brought a marked change in...

Domesday Book has been described as 'the most valuable piece of antiquity possessed by any nation.' (David Hume) But a complete translation has never been available before at an affordable price. Penguin's edition will change that. Compiled in a matter...

One of the most influential political texts ever written on America, and an indispensable authority on the nature of democracy In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through eastern America...

Just across the River Thames from St Paul's Cathedral stands an old and elegant house. Over the course of almost 450 years the dwelling on this site has witnessed many changes. From its windows, people have watched the ferrymen carry Londoners to and...

'Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body'Raymond Antrobus, author of The PerseveranceIn October 1960, James Baldwin and John Cheever spoke on a panel together at San Francisco State College. The troubled state of American society was...

Curating empire explores the diverse roles played by museums and their curators in moulding and representing the British imperial experience. This collection demonstrates how individuals, their curatorial practices, and intellectual and political agendas...

An urgent examination of the great wave of change breaking over today’s world – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and New York Times bestselling author of The Death of Truth ‘A profoundly inspiring and prophetic perspective on the contemporary...

Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson. The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC),...

Stefan Zweig was a born eulogist. In this collection of powerful elegies, homages and personal memories, Zweig forms a richly interconnected portrait of key creative figures in the European cultural diaspora up to 1939. Many of those mourned or...

'Gaius Pliny sends greetings to his friend Septicius Clarus...' In these letters to his friends and relations, Pliny provides a fascinating insight into Roman life in the period 97 to 112 AD. Part autobiography, part social history, they document the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789189069725Author Philip BobbitFormat HardbackPage Count 312Imprint Stolpe PublishingPublisher Stolpe PublishingWeight(grams) 980g

Discover why Roman gladiators were massaged with onion juice before battle, how celery contributed to Casanova's conquests, how peas almost poisoned General Washington, and why some seventeenth-century turnips were considered degenerate. Rebecca Rupp...

`the fates ordained the founding of this great city and the beginning of the world's mightiest empire, second only to the power of the gods' Romulus and Remus, the rape of Lucretia, Horatius at the bridge, the saga of Coriolanus, Cincinnatus called...

A.J. Woodman's translation combines accuracy and Tacitean invention, masterfully conveying Tacitus' distinctive and powerful manner of expression, and reflecting the best of current scholarship. An introductory essay discusses Tacitus' career, the period...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781800994874Author John GeraintFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Y LolfaPublisher Y LolfaDimensions(mm) 215mm * 140mm * 19mm

The Middle Ages in Texts and Texture is an introduction to medieval Europe unlike any other. These 26 essays, written by accomplished scholars all trained at the University of California, Berkeley, reflect on medieval texts and the opportunities they...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783111434971Author Lihi Ben ShitritFormat PaperbackPage Count 214Imprint De GruyterPublisher De Gruyter

Martin Amis first wrote about September 11 a week later in a piece for The Guardian beginning, 'It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment.' He has kept returning to September 11, in...

"To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project...

'Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends on intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor...' In these two classic essays of feminist literature, Woolf argues passionately for women's intellectual freedom and their role...

Praised as a "revelatory" book by The Wall Street Journal, this is the last and most personal work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Will Durant, discovered thirty-two years after his death.The culmination of Will Durant's sixty-plus years...

This startling biography explores the remarkable life of an iconic figure of the twentieth century, Vaclav Havel, author and dissident, who became the first president of the Czech Republic.Vaclav Havel: iconoclast and philosopher king, an internationally...

'Fascinating... I loved this book; I really did' David Crystal, Spectator A biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling...

'With one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of Firedrops'A selection from Pepys' startlingly vivid and candid diary, including his famous account of the Great FireIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th...