The instant Sunday Times bestseller A Times, New Statesman and Spectator Book of the Year 'Simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages there is' Sunday Times 'A great achievement, pulling together many strands with aplomb' Peter Frankopan, Spectator, Books of the Year 'It's so delightful to encounter a skilled historian of such enormous energy who's never afraid of being entertaining' The Times, Books of the Year 'An amazing masterly gripping panorama' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'A badass history writer... to put it mildly' Duff McKagan 'A triumph' Charles Spencer Dan Jones's epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. It is a thousand-year adventure that moves from the ruins of the once-mighty city of Rome, sacked by barbarians in AD 410, to the first contacts between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century. It shows how, from a state of crisis and collapse, the West was rebuilt and came to dominate the entire globe. The book identifies three key themes that underpinned the success of the West: commerce, conquest and Christianity. Across 16 chapters, blending Dan Jones's trademark gripping narrative style with authoritative analysis, Powers and Thrones shows how, at each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting - or stealing - the most valuable resources, ideas and people from the rest of the world. It casts new light on iconic locations - Rome, Paris, Venice, Constantinople - and it features some of history's most famous and notorious men and women. This is a book written about - and for - an age of profound change, and it asks the biggest questions about the West both then and now. Where did we come from? What made us? Where do we go from here? Also available in audio, read by the author.

Lisa Pine assembles an impressive array of influential scholars in Life and Times in Nazi Germany to explore the variety and complexity of life in Germany under Hitler's totalitarian regime. The book is a thematic collection of essays that examine the extent to which social and cultural life in Germany was permeated by Nazi aims and ambitions. Each essay deals with a different theme of daily German life in the Nazi era, with topics including food, fashion, health, sport, art, tourism and religion all covered in chapters based on original and expert scholarship. Life and Times in Nazi Germany, which also includes 24 images and helpful end-of-chapter select bibliographies, provides a new lens through which to observe life in Nazi Germany - one that highlights the everyday experience of Germans under Hitler's rule. It illuminates aspects of life under Nazi control that are less well-known and examines the contradictions and paradoxes that characterised daily life in Nazi Germany in order to enhance and sophisticate our understanding of this period in the nation's history. This is a crucial volume for all students of Nazi Germany and the history of Germany in the 20th century.

The Russo-Turkish War""was one of the most decisive conflicts of the 18th century. In this book, Brian Davies offers a thorough survey of the war and explains why it was crucial to the political triumph of Catherine the Great, the southward expansion of the Russian Empire, and the rollback of Ottoman power from southeastern Europe. The war completed the incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire, ended the independence of the great Cossack hosts, removed once and for all the military threat from the Crimean Khanate, began the partitions of Poland, and encouraged Catherine II to plan projects to complete the "liberation" of the lower Danubian and Balkan Slavs and Greeks. The war legitimated and secured the power of Catherine II, finally made the Pontic steppe safe for agricultural colonization, and won ports enabling Russia to control the Black Sea and become a leading grain exporter. Traditionally historians (Sorel, for example) have treated this war as the beginning of the "Eastern Question," the question of how the European powers should manage the decline of the Ottoman Empire. A thorough grasp of the Russo-Turkish War is essential to understanding the complexity and volatility of diplomacy in 18th-century Europe. This book will be an invaluable resource for all scholars and students on European military history and the history of Eastern Europe.

International Organizations play a pivotal role on the modern global stage and have done, this book argues, since the beginning of the 20th century. This volume offers the first historical exploration into the formative years of international public administrations, covering the birth of the League of Nations and the emergence of the second generation that still shape international politics today such as the UN, NATO and OECD. Centring on Europe, where the multilaterization of international relations played out more intensely in the mid-20th century than in other parts of the world, it demonstrates a broad range of historiographical and methodological approaches to institutions in international history. The book argues that after several 'turns' (cultural, linguistic, material, transnational), international history is now better equipped to restate its core questions of policy and power with a view to their institutional dimensions. Making use of new approaches in the field, this book develops an understanding of the specific powers and roles of IO-administrations by delving into their institutional make-up.

This book argues that while the historiography of the development of scientific ideas has for some time acknowledged the important influences of socio-cultural and material contexts, the significant impact of traumatic events, life threatening illnesses and other psychotropic stimuli on the development of scientific thought may not have been fully recognised. Howard Carlton examines the available primary sources which provide insight into the lives of a number of nineteenth-century astronomers, theologians and physicists to study the complex interactions within their 'biocultural' brain-body systems which drove parallel changes of perspective in theology, metaphysics, and cosmology. In doing so, he also explores three topics of great scientific interest during this period: the question of the possible existence of life on other planets; the deployment of the nebular hypothesis as a theory of cosmogony; and the religiously charged debates about the ages of the earth and sun. From this body of evidence we gain a greater understanding of the underlying phenomena which actuated intellectual developments in the past and which are still relevant to today's knowledge-making processes.

In 1942, the United States War Department distributed a handbook to American servicemen that advised them on the peculiarities of the "British, their country, and their ways."

Over sixty years later, this newly published reproduction from the rich archives of the Bodleian Library offers a fascinating glimpse into American military preparations for World War II. The guide was intended to alleviate the culture shock for soldiers taking their first trip to Great Britain, or, for that matter, abroad. The handbook is punctuated with endearingly nostalgic advice and refreshingly candid quips such as: "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap."

By turns hilarious and poignant, many observations featured in the handbook remain relevant even today. Reproduced in a style reminiscent of the era, "Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain" is a powerfully evocative war-time memento that offers a unique perspective on the longstanding American-British relationship and reveals amusingly incisive American perceptions of the British character and country.

Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991-2011 is the first study that looks at the literary process in post-independence Ukraine comprehensively and attempts to draw the connection between literary production and identity construction. In its quest for identity Ukraine has followed a path similar to other postcolonial societies, the main characteristics of which include a slow transition, hybridity, and identities negotiated on the center-periphery axis. This monograph concentrates on major works of literature produced during the first two decades of independence and places them against the background of clearly identifiable contexts such as regionalism, gender issues, language politics, social ills, and popular culture. It also shows that Ukrainian literary politics of that period privileges the plurality and hybridity of national and cultural identities. By engaging postcolonial discourse and insisting that literary production is socially instituted, Maria G. Rewakowicz explores the reasons behind the tendency toward cultural hybridity and plural identities in literary imagination. Ukraine's Quest for Identity will appeal to all those keen to study cultural, social and political ramifications of the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and beyond.