Non-Secondhand Books

What happens to a composer when persecution and exile means their true music no longer has an audience? In the 1930s, composers and musicians began to flee Hitler's Germany to...

The Second World War was the defining moment in the history of the Soviet Union. With Stalin at the helm, it emerged victorious at a huge economic and human cost....

A gripping account of the Knights Templar, challenging received wisdom to show how these devout medieval knights played a profound role in making modern Britain The Knights Templar have an...

An ambitious revisionist history of the modern Middle East What Really Went Wrong offers a fresh and incisive assessment of American foreign policy's impact on the history and politics of...

Amongst the Ruins explores the loss of ancient civilisations, the collapse of ruling elites and the disappearance of more recent communities and their local traditions. Some of these are now...

A sweeping new history that reveals how British, African, and American merchants developed the transatlantic slave trade "This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best...

An elegant consideration of the Surrealist movement as a global phenomenon and why it continues to resonate Why does Surrealism continue to fascinate us a century after Andre Breton's Manifesto...

A pioneering history of cross-cultural knowledge that exposes enduring fractures in unity across the world's largest continent The nineteenth century saw European empires build vast transport networks to maximize their...

The life, dramatic reign, and enduring legacy of the pharaoh Ramesses the Great, with lessons for the present, from internationally acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson Ramesses II ruled the Nile Valley...

Thomas R. Martin recounts the unmatched political and military career of Phocion of Athens, and his tragic downfall "Elegant and enlightening."-Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal Phocion (402-318 BCE) won Athens's...

A biography of Vergil, Rome's greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of...

What happened on the last day of the Great War? Each year since we have marked the end of the war with tributes and remembrance, solemnity and respect. But as...

A journey guided by science that explores the universe, the earth, and the story of life For Irwin Shapiro, good science starts with good questions. This book provides a broad...

A deeply researched biography of the prominent and divisive writer Ayn Rand, whose pro-capitalist novels and nonfiction have influenced three generations of Americans "Excellent and succinct."-Jim Kelly, Air Mail Biographer...

A captivating biography of one of the world's greatest adventurers, the itinerant Mughal Princess Gulbadan, based on her long-forgotten memoir Situated in the early decades of the powerful Mughal Empire,...

The East India Company was the most powerful commercial enterprise in British history. Yet its speculative, highly risky origins are now all but forgotten. A revolution in commerce during the...

The fascinating history of American bookishness as told through the sale of Charles Lamb's library in 1848 Charles Lamb's library-a heap of sixty scruffy old books singed with smoke, soaked...

An inviting exploration of architecture across cultures and centuries by one of the field's eminent authors In this sweeping history, from the Stone Age to the present day, Witold Rybczynski...

A major new history of the Royal Navy during the tumultuous age of revolution The French Revolutionary Wars catapulted Britain into a conflict against a new enemy: Republican France. Britain...

A thrilling new biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky-composer of some of the world's most popular orchestral and theatrical music "A lively, argumentative and thoughtful reflection on one of the 19th...

A pioneering history of medical care in Stalin's Gulag-showing how doctors and nurses cared for inmates in appalling conditions A byword for injustice, suffering, and mass mortality, the Gulag exploited...

A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read,...

A compelling, expansive history of the relationship between China and Russia, from the seventeenth century to the present Russia and China, the largest and most populous countries in the world,...

The extraordinary story of the Popish Plot and how it shaped the political and religious future of Britain In 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England...

A collection of 50 postcards, each featuring an iconic Jane Austen cover from Penguin, in a beautifully designed box. 'I have now attained the true art of letter writing,' wrote...

Sunday Times No.1 bestselling hero Orphan X is back with a bang in his biggest adventure yet. 'Pure nail-biting stay-up-all-night suspense' Harlan Coben Two problems- A tech-billionaire whose psychological crisis...

After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the Associated Press (AP) brought news about life under the Third Reich to tens of millions of American readers. The...

Biophilia-the love of life-encompasses the drive to survive, a sense of kinship with all life-forms, and an instinct for beauty. In this unconventional book, Kay Harel uses biophilia as a...

Did a red fox pass this way? Could that be a bobcat print there in the dirt? Do those tracks belong to a domestic dog or a coyote? Combining lyrical...

In the late fifteenth century, a young Dominican friar sets out on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy. Along the way, he encounters...

The Tarikh-i Hamidi is an epic and tragic history from the region of Xinjiang in northwest China, the homeland of the Muslim-majority Uyghur people. Written in the early twentieth century,...

Whenever a person engages with music-when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest...

Long before the arrival of Western emissaries and powers, East Asian peoples and states were deeply involved in world affairs. In this sweeping account, Warren I. Cohen explores four millennia...

The Mongols, their khans, and the empire they built and ruled in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries exert an enduring fascination. Caricatured as a marauding horde that ravaged surrounding peoples,...

Late one night in December 2008, police arrived at the home of Liu Xiaobo-China's leading dissident, a key figure in the prodemocracy manifesto Charter 08-and took him away. When Liu...

What is the likelihood that common chemicals such as bisphenol-A, which is found in plastic water bottles, are harming us? Should shoppers be concerned about pesticide residues on fruits and...

An imam banished from eastern Indonesia to the Cape of Good Hope in 1780 builds a new Muslim community with a mix of fellow exiles, enslaved people, and even the...

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is one of the most eminent Japanese writers of the twentieth century, renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity. Most acclaimed for his postwar...

The theory of evolution unites the past, present, and future of living things. It puts humanity's place in the universe into necessary perspective. Despite a history of controversy, the evidence...

A tour of Mars in the human imagination, from ancient astrologers to modern explorers. Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. For the Love of...

A history of how, in the mid-twentieth century, we came to believe in the concept of creativity. Named a best book of 2023 by the New Yorker and a notable...

The first book to lay bare the life of a Nazi camp guard who settled in a Chicago suburb and to explore how his community and others responded to discoveries...

Takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powerful companies and allied academic scientists mold research to meet industry needs. The 1990s were tough times for the...

A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two...

The story behind the creation of Les Quatre Vents, one of the world's most breathtaking public gardens. As featured in the 2018 film The Gardener , Les Quatre Vents in...

A new history of how the Nazi era upended German-Jewish experiences of space and time from eminent historian Guy Miron. In Space and Time under Persecution , Guy Miron considers...

"Brilliant. . . . An absorbing read and a potent lesson in moral behavior-both of rodents and of humans."-Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poison Squad * "A fascinating...

A 400-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. In medieval and early modern Europe, the practice of alchemy promised...