Essays

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...

'I hope my passion for Rome's past has not impaired my judgement; for I do honestly believe that no country has ever been greater or purer than ours or richer in good citizens and noble deeds'Livy dedicated most of his life to writing some 142 volumes of...

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

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...

*THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*Four Hundred Souls is an epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, told by ninety leading Black voices -- co-curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the million-copy bestseller How To...

NEW EDITION - FEATURING UPDATED INTRODUCTION AND NEW CHAPTERS The giant characters of history - from Mozart to Michelangelo, Shakespeare to Einstein, Henry VIII to Hitler, Catherine the Great to Margaret Thatcher, Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan - lived...

"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...

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...

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...

Scholar, churchman, diplomat and theologian, Gerald of Wales was one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages and The Journey Through Wales describes his eventful tour of the country as a missionary in 1188. In a style reminiscent of a diary,...

In Imaging Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary, Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void) and leading broadcaster/historian Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) offer an expanded, revised edition of their...

'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...

Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate descriptions of the countryside, colourful accounts of his encounters with labourers, and indignant outbursts at the encroaching...

Greco-Roman antiquity's premier Jewish historian.Josephus, soldier, statesman, historian, was a Jew born at Jerusalem about AD 37. A man of high descent, he early became learned in Jewish law and Greek literature and was a Pharisee. After pleading in...

Written by Europe's first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes. It paints an intricate picture of daily...

"[An] incredibly moving collection of oral histories . . . important enough to be added to the history curriculum" Telegraph"A moving evocation of the 'everyday terror' systematically perpetrated over 41 years of Albanian communism . . . An illuminating...

Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome (27 BC-AD 14), brought peace and prosperity to his city after decades of savage civil war. This selection from Cassius Dio's Roman History gives the fullest description of that long struggle and ultimate triumph...

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...

"What a splendid subject to sink one's teeth into," raved the Washington Post . Here was a six-foot-two Irishman with a red beard,a Victorian family man, a spirited debater, and the author of novels and short stories largely forgotten today. All, of...

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...

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...

'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...

'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...

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...

Three times viceroy, Sir Henry Sidney was a key figure in the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. This is Sidney's own account of his career in Ireland, last published in the mid-19th century.Book InformationISBN 9781859181805Author Sir Henry SidneyFormat...

Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesman of the classical period. Taken from the Lives, a...

'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...

'The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one.' - Ernest HemingwayA unique and captivating collection of Hemingway's writings on war, including extracts from his unparalleled war novels, some classic short stories, an extract from his only...

This work begins with a boy named Geraldo growing up Sicilian in Rochester, New York, and ends with the author breakfasting with Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House. It is a portrait of what it was like to come of age in the 1930s and 1940s.Book...

`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...

***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 JHALAK PRIZE***A leading new exploration of the Windrush generation featuring David Lammy, Lenny Henry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Hannah Lowe, Jamz Supernova, Natasha Gordon and Rikki Beadle-Blair.For the...

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...

From its origin as the Roman city of Londinium through to its latest incarnation as a super-diverse World City in the twenty-first century, London's history and culture has been shaped by migration. This book expresses and celebrates the plurality of the...

Roberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire's Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later...

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...

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...

The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman's Park, London, is a Victorian monument containing fifty-four ceramic plaques commemorating sixty-two individuals, each of whom lost their own life while attempting to save another. Every plaque...

How could Nazi killers shoot Jewish women and children at close range? Why did Japanese soldiers rape and murder on such a horrendous scale? How was it possible to endure the torment of a Nazi death camp?Award-winning documentary maker and historian...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375725821Author Alma GuillermoprietoFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 288gDimensions(mm)...

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...