Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2892

Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2892

A.J.P. Taylor appears twice — on Bismarck and on Hitler — and the company is equally serious: Dayan's memoir, Gorky's wartime diary, the le Carré-introduced Philby, and four Fontana European history volumes. Sixteen essential books.

1. Fragments from My Diary — Maxim Gorky, trans. Moura Budberg — Gorky's vivid wartime sketches and portraits of revolutionary Russia.
2. The Ancient Civilizations of Peru — J. Alden Mason (Pelican) — the standard introduction to pre-Columbian Andean culture from the Chavin through to the Inca.
3. The Survey of London — John Stow (Everyman Paperback) — the great Elizabethan antiquary's survey of London in 1598, the indispensable picture of the city Shakespeare knew.
4. Fred Daly: From Curtin to Kerr — the political memoirs of one of Australian Labor's most colourful and enduring figures.
5. The Origins of the Second World War — A.J.P. Taylor (Penguin) — Taylor's brilliant and deliberately provocative reappraisal, still the most argued-over book in modern British historiography.
6. Story of My Life — Moshe Dayan — the memoir of Israel's most celebrated soldier and Defence Minister, covering war, politics, and the making of a state.
7. The Arabs — Anthony Nutting (Mentor Book) — a comprehensive history of the Arab peoples from the birth of Islam to the mid-twentieth century.
8. Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman — A.J.P. Taylor (Mentor) — Taylor's characteristically crisp biography of the Iron Chancellor, who unified Germany through blood and iron.
9. Byron in Italy — Peter Quennell (Penguin) — the most spectacular phase of Byron's life, from 1816, when he left England and never returned.
10. Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation — Bruce Page, David Leitch and Phillip Knightley; introduction by John le Carré (Penguin) — the definitive account of Kim Philby's double life, specially revised with extensive new material.
11. Europe of the Ancien Régime 1715–1783 — David Ogg (Fontana History of Europe) — from the death of Louis XIV to the eve of the French Revolution.
12. Europe Reshaped 1848–1878 — J.A.S. Grenville (Fontana) — the revolutionary year and the long consolidation that followed across the continent.
13. The Kings Depart: The German Revolution and the Treaty of Versailles 1918–19 — Richard M. Watt (Pelican) — the collapse of the German Empire and the impossible peace that followed.
14. A History of Scotland — J.D. Mackie (Pelican Original) — a clear and authoritative history of Scotland from the earliest times to the twentieth century.
15. The Making of Europe — Christopher Dawson (Meridian Books) — Dawson's classic study of the formation of European civilisation in the early Middle Ages.
16. The American Impact on Russia 1784–1917 — Max M. Laserson — a scholarly study of American political and cultural influence on Tsarist Russia across more than a century.