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A Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph and Economist
'This book reads like a spy novel' FINANICAL TIMES
'Entertaining and vivid' OBSERVER
'Reads like a thriller' THE SUN
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The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual devotion – they are also political acts, affirmations of identity and engagements with deep-rooted historical narratives. Kathryn Hurlock follows the trail of pilgrimage through nineteen sacred sites – from Tai Shan to Jerusalem, Amritsar to Buenos Aires – revealing the many ways in which this ancient practice has shaped our religions and our world. Pilgrimages have transformed the fates of cities, anointed dynasties, provided guidance in hard times and driven progress in good. Filled with fascinating insights, this book unveils the complex histories and contemporary endurance of one of our most fundamental human urges.
In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse. By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. And by war’s end Berlin’s population had fallen by almost half. Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported work
The great majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has to an extent been predictable. As an increasing number of Great Powers now jostle for regional supremacy our world has become more fragile, unpredictable – and combustible. To understand the threats that face us in this complex new terrain, we must look to the lessons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – a time when Great Powers clashed and sought regional dominance, when nationalism and populism were on the rise, and many felt that globalization had failed them: a time, in other words, that carries eerie parallels with our own. ‘The Coming Storm’ is a prescient, thoughtful and chilling examination of the current state of the world.
Discover the most significant moments in the history of the world, from the origins of Homo Sapiens to the arrival of the internet, and from the French Revolution to the Space Race. And come face to face with the world’s most influential leaders, thinkers, and political figures, from Julius Caesar to Barack Obama – a truly accessible and comprehensive route into a fascinating and essential subject.
Nature editor and Science Book Prize winner Henry Gee explores the future of our species and our probable extinction, while suggesting how, through technological innovation, we might indefinitely postpone our fate.
At or about 1.15 in the afternoon of 21 October 1805, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was struck by a 22-gramme, 15-millimetre French musket round fired down from the mizzen top of the Redoutable, a distance of some 70 feet to HMS Victory’s quarter deck. It nicked the edge of his epaulette, and passed diagonally down, through the material of his coat and into the left shoulder, fracturing the upper part of the scapula or shoulder blade, then the second and third rib. It pierced the left lung, dividing a branch of the pulmonary artery, and emerged to sever the spine, splintering the sixth and seventh vertebrae above and below as it crashed between. The soft lead ball – distorted by collisions with bone – ended its flight embedded in muscle two inches below the right scapula. In this fresh and visceral retelling of the battle of Trafalgar, Paul O’Keeffe traces the course of events both prior and subsequent to that fatal shot.
In 1786, France’s ancien régime was functioning as usual. Its alliance with the victorious American colonies had restored its diplomatic prestige, the economy seemed to be flourishing, and internal politics seemed quiet. But just a few short years later, the dynasty which had ruled France for over 800 years was swept away. What happened to cause such devastating change to the long-established political structure? John Hardman traces the political history of the French Revolution, from its origins to its aftermath. Hardman argues that the nature of ancien régime politics, the mismanagement of the fiscal crisis, and a new generation of young, overly confident politicians brought the Bourbon monarchy’s apparatus crashing down.
In 410 CE, Roman rule of Britain collapsed, bringing a centuries-long occupation to an end. A century later, Britain was dividing into two areas with contrasting cultures, an expansive ‘Anglo-Saxon’ south and east, and a shrinking Celtic west and north. How did this transition happen? And why did the customs of the Germanic incomers prevail in England, unlike elsewhere in Europe? In this deeply researched account, Nicholas J. Higham addresses these difficult questions head on. Higham draws on archaeological evidence and contemporary literature, including the writings of Gildas, to reconsider the accepted narrative.
Lambert argues for a dynamic new understanding of the 19th century, showing how British policymakers shaped a stable European system that it could balance from offshore. Through judicious deployment of naval power against continental forces, and the defence strategy of statesmen such as the Duke of Wellington, Britain ensured that no single European state could rise to pose a threat, rebuilt its economy, and established naval and trade dominance across the globe. This is the remarkable story of how Britain kept a whole continent in check – until the final collapse of this delicately balanced order at the outset of World War One.
How should we deal with nuclear weapons? The discovery of nuclear fission fundamentally changed the world order. Its power was harnessed, nuclear bombs invented, and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. In recurring international crises and calls for arms control, the threat of nuclear war has hung over humanity ever since. David Holloway traces how these weapons shaped the last century, from the US-Soviet arms race to the rivalry between India and Pakistan. Deterrence and intimidation, alliances and war plans, international treaties and organizations have all played their role. At the centre were political leaders – among them Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan, as well as Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev – who all had their fingers on the nuclear button.
What was it like to live on the edges of ancient empires, at the boundaries of the known world? In this bold revisionist history of the ancient world, Owen Rees shifts our focus from the centres of Greece and Rome to the lively, long-ignored societies on the borders.
In August 1940, a man walked into Leon Trotsky’s study in Mexico City and drove an ice pick into his skull. The killer? Ramon Mercader – an aristocratic Spaniard turned Soviet assassin. The mastermind? Joseph Stalin. But this was no simple hit. It was the climax of a decade-long global hunt: a story of seduction and betrayal, of fake identities and secret loyalties, of idealists and fanatics, lovers and spies. While Trotsky raged in exile – still clinging to his revolutionary dream – Stalin’s agents closed in. And at the heart of it all was Mercader: a man trained to lie, charm and ultimately to kill.
Beautiful, sensuous and enigmatic, great carpets follow power Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world’s 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibres from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots. In this book, Dorothy Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world’s most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great.
An inventive new look at the entwined histories of Britain and Ireland’s nations – and the people who have called them home.
The Hotel Lutetia is a Paris institution, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank. Ever since it opened, it has served as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. Andre Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. It has a darker history, too. During one short period, it became a focus for some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history. In the 1930s the Hotel Lutetia attracted intellectuals and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, who met here with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service – and the centre of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich.
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