20th Century History

British artist, Lucian Freud is widely considered the most important figurative painter working today. Master portraitist and specialist in nudes, Freud uses impasto to create depth and intensity while restraining...

This latest addition to Prestel's successful Living Art series offers a critical portrait of Francis Bacon, one of the world's most renowned contemporary artists, to reveal a conflicted man of...

Howard Hodgkin is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters - and certainly the greatest colourist - at work in Britain today. His method of painting means that...

Hodgkin's art can be seen as providing memorials for people, many of whom are friends, whose absence is countered by th e corresponding physical presence of particular paintings. Descriptive elements...

Into the world of 1950s Ireland - a lushly green, windswept landscape studded with holy wells and the decaying country houses of a vanished ruling class - arrives Ithell Colquhoun....

No one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His vision, with its absurdity and twisted humour, has lost...

This engrossing volume takes us on a fascinating visual journey through the most groundbreaking and avant-garde art from the early 20th century to the present. Stunning high-quality photographs of major...

Like so many Australian women artists of her era, Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884-1961) has been rediscovered by contemporary art historians. For the first time, In Search of Beauty showcases her...

This popular anthology of twentieth-century art theoretical texts has now been expanded to take account of new research, and to include significant contributions to art theory from the 1990s. New...

'A heart-breaking, inspiring read' ALAN CUMMING 'ONE OF THE MOST MOVING ACCOUNTS OF NON-FICTION EVER WRITTEN' GUARDIAN 'If you like Shuggie Bain , then Slum Boy is for you' LEMN...

'A mob of 1000 skinheads running along a road is a frightening sight. Into the tube gates we rushed. On the tube, there was the usual knees up mother brown,...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'John le Carre demystified the intelligence services; Higgins has demystified intelligence gathering itself' Financial Times 'Uplifting . . . Riveting . . . What will fire...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 'A BIG-HEARTED STORY ABOUT FINDING YOUR FEET AND FOLLOWING YOUR HEART'...

'A first-class work of reporting [and] a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere' BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of SONTAG 'A non-fiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism and murder...

During World War I, Britain's naval supremacy enabled it to impose economic blockades and interdiction of American neutral shipping. The United States responded by building 'a navy second to none',...

For fans of Bridgerton and The Gilded Age comes a sweeping historical novel that tells the story of Ida B. Wells from her teen years and early romances up through...

The Dutch architect Willem Jan Neutelings (co-founder of Neutelings Riedijk Architects) is known as the architect of, among other things, the MAS in Antwerp and the Gare Maritime in Brussels'...

Beautiful portrait of America in the 1960s, rediscovered after 50 years. In 1966, Mario Carnicelli won first place in an Italian national photography competition sponsored by Popular Photography magazine and...

Part thriller, part psychological drama, part puzzle with a strange twist, The Mascot is one of the most astonishing stories to emerge from the Second World War. It tells the...

From award-winning booze correspondent Henry Jeffreys comes this rich and full-bodied history of Britain and the Empire, told through the improbable but true stories of how the world's favourite alcoholic...

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables,...

'An unmissable reading treat' Lancashire Evening Post 'Beautifully written and emotionally charged . . . impossible to put down' HAZEL GAYNOR A heartwrenching and evocative wartime novel, perfect for fans...

For months, the omens had pointed in one scarcely believable direction: Russia was about to invade Ukraine. And yet, the world was stunned by the epochal scale of the assault...

In this "superb" (Kathryn Olmsted) new history of American intelligence, a celebrated historian uncovers how the CIA became the foremost defender of America's covert global empire As World War II...

From sleepy fishing village to samurai capital to vibrant global metropolis, Eiko Maruko Siniawer takes readers through Tokyo's rich history, revealing four centuries of transformation deeply woven into its fabric....

For decades, Hong Kong has maintained precarious freedom at the edge of competing world powers. In City on the Edge, Ho-fung Hung offers a timely and engaging account of Hong...

Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of...

Ours is the Age of Food. Food is a central obsession in all cultures, nations, the media, and society. Our future supply of food is filled with risk, and history...

When Australian soldiers returned from the First World War they were offered the chance to settle on 'land fit for heroes'. Promotional material painted a picture of prosperous farms and...

Fighting the People's War is an unprecedented, panoramic history of the 'citizen armies' of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, the core of the British...

The fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been paid to the tremendous impact...

In innumerable ways, we still live in LBJ's America. More than half a century after his death, Lyndon Baines Johnson continues to exert profound influence on American life. This collection...

What do nineteenth-century fiction, early twentieth-century popular music, 1930s soccer, 1950s film comedy, 1960s experimental art and 1970s soap operas have in common with one another? Each reveal the deep...

Richard Hamilton provides an in-depth critique of the writngs of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Britain, France, and Germany. Hamilton contends that the validity of their principal historical claims...

How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in IndiaDuring the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and...

John Butler Yeats was the father of the poet W.B. Yeats and the painter Jack Yeats. This selection of his letters covers the period 1898 to his death in 1922....

Volume 1 of a three volume set containing Henry Handel Richardson's correspondence in its entirety. This three volume set marks the first time any Australian literary writer has had his/her...

The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 6 (June 1934-June 1936) traces the completion and publication of Hemingway's experimental nonfiction book Green Hills of Africa and work on stories including 'The...

In 1929, Louise Nevelson was a disappointed housewife with a young son, surrounded by New York's vibrant artistic community but unable to fully engage with it. By 1950, she was...

Years after its release, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains one of the most beloved and best-selling albums in all of indie music, hailed as a...

Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human...

These outstanding books bring to life the people, places and events of the past in these islands, from the earliest settlers to the present day. They explore the everyday lives...

A study of hard bop, combining a narrative of the movement's evolution, from its beginnings as an amalgam of bebop and R&B to its experimental breakthroughs in the 1960s. The...

Described as `one of the most tragic human experiences in human history', the Soviet Union as an empire holds much intrigue and fascination for the Western world. It held unquestionable...

The groundbreaking work on being homosexual in America-available again only from Penguin Classics and with a new foreword by Dan Savage Originally published in 1971, Merle Miller'sOn Being Differentis a...

A comprehensive collection of writings from journalist, lecturer, anti-lynching activist, and early civil rights advocate Ida B. Wells. This is the latest addition to the African American classics series edited...

The author was with the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. He witnessed the defiance of the workers and the emergence of an improbable leader and hero in Lech...