Lisbon: City of the Sea is a beautifully written portrait of a much loved city, from its origins in Greek legend to the present day. Malcolm Jack vividly captures the rich and unique history of this haunting and attractive port whose prominent position on the Tagus estuary has inextricably bound its character with the sea. Lisbon is a city of steep inclines and complicated, unsymmetrical streets that criss-cross the hills only in the Baixa area near the river and in the more modern, northern part of the city does any form of a grid system appear. It has enjoyed a political history that has directed Portugal's focus more overseas than inland towards continental Europe, in part because of Spain's geographical position. Thus the city has been stretched in one direction toward Brazil and in another toward the Cape of Good Hope and from there to Asia and the East. Beginning with its earliest inhabitants, Jack traces the city's life through its imperial success in the sixteenth century and the devastating earthquake that humbled the city and shocked Europe in 1755 to its current position as a vibrant and successful European capital. Lisbon's romantic atmosphere has captured the imaginations of foreigners through the ages. Poets, writers and musicians have all drawn inspiration from different parts of Lisbon. This sensitive exploration of the city's many aspects draws out its cosmopolitan nature, as well as its colourful culture and self-image and brings us closer to understanding its true spirit. Engaging and accessible, this book will appeal to Lisbon's many visitors as well as anyone interested in European history.

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It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century: the assassination of president John F. Kennedy

Within seven weeks of president Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.

Now, in her selection of 250 of these astonishing letters, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick reveals a remarkable human record of that devastating moment, of Americans across generations, regions, races, political leanings, and religions, in mourning and crisis. Reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their hopes, the authors of these letters wrote an elegy for the fallen president that captured the soul of the nation.

'I get enormously impressed when she walks into a room,' Princess Margaret once said of her sister. 'It's a kind of magic.' Prince William recalled, 'As I learned growing up, you don't mess with your grandmother. What she says goes.' In the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, royal biographer Ian Lloyd reveals the woman behind the legend over 70 themed chapters. Drawing on interviews with relatives, friends and courtiers, he explores her relationship with seven generations of the royal family, from the children of Queen Victoria to Elizabeth's own great-grandchildren. He also sheds light on some lesser-known aspects of her character, such as her frugality and her gift for mimicry. In addition, we see her encounters with A-listers, from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, and her adept handling of several of the twentieth century's most difficult leaders. Above all, Lloyd examines how the Queen has stayed true to the promise she made to the nation at the age of 21, 'that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service'.

IN 1936, Adolf Hitler welcomed the world to Berlin to attend the Olympic Games. It promised to be not only a magnificent sporting event but also a grand showcase for the rebuilt Germany. No effort was spared to present the Third Reich as the newest global power. But beneath the glittering surface, the Games of the Eleventh Olympiad of the Modern Era came to act as a crucible for the dark political forces that were gathering, foreshadowing the bloody conflict to come.

The 1936 Olympics were nothing less than the most political sporting event of the last century--an epic clash between proponents of barbarism and those of civilization, both of whom tried to use the Games to promote their own values. Berlin Games is the complete history of those fateful two weeks in August. It is a story of the athletes and their accomplishments, an eye-opening account of the Nazi machine's brazen attempt to use the Games as a model of Aryan superiority and fascist efficiency, and a devastating indictment of the manipulative power games of politicians, diplomats, and Olympic officials that would ultimately have profound consequences for the entire world.

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, historian Philip Jenkins reveals the powerful religious dimensions of this modern-day crusade, a period that marked a traumatic crisis for Western civilization, with effects that echoed throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major religions--Christianity, Judaism and Islam--paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism.

Connecting numerous remarkable incidents and characters--from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide--Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war.

An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness. 'Took my breath away.' BARBARA DEMICK 'Haunting.' OLIVER BURKEMAN 'A master class in storytelling and journalism.' GARY YOUNGE Red Memory explores the stories of those who are driven to confront the era, fearing or yearning its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare is a transcendent work of narrative nonfiction in the vein of The Hare with Amber Eyes.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy during World War II.

As a young boy, Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated.

Piecing together fragments of his aunt's remarkable and tragic story, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

"I have decided to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion against England."--Adolph Hitler, July 16, 1940
Operation Sealion was the codename for the Nazi invasion of Britain that Hitler ordered his generals to plan after France fell in June 1940. Although the plan ultimately never came to fruition, a few sets of the Germans' detailed strategy documents are housed in the rare book rooms of libraries across Europe. But now the Bodleian Library has made documents from their set available for all to peruse in this unprecedented collection of the invasion planning materials.
The planned operation would have involved landing 160,000 German soldiers along a forty-mile stretch of coast in southeast England. Packets of reconnaissance materials were put together for the invading forces, and the most intriguing parts are now reproduced here. Each soldier was to be given maps and geographical descriptions of the British Isles that broke down the country by regions, aerial photographs pinpointing strategic targets, an extensive listing of British roads and rivers, strategic plans for launching attacks on each region, an English dictionary and phrase book, and even a brief description of Britain's social composition.
Augmenting the fascinating documents is an informative introduction that sets the materials in their historical and political context. A must-have for every military history buff, "German Invasion Plans for the British Isles, 1940" is a remarkable revelation of the inner workings of Hitler's most famous unrealized military campaign.

In 1880 the continent of Africa was largely unexplored by Europeans. Less than thirty years later, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained unconquered by them. The rest - 10 million square miles with 110 million bewildered new subjects - had been carved up by five European powers (and one extraordinary individual) in the name of Commerce, Christianity, 'Civilization' and Conquest. The Scramble for Africa is the first full-scale study of that extraordinary episode in history.

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall Freeman's works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee.

The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who commanded -- among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell -- developed as leaders and men. Lee's Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation. Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lee's Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historian's art as practiced at its very highest level.

At four in the morning on April 19, 1975, a line of British soldiers stared across the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, at a crowd of seventy-seven Amercican militiamen. A shot rang out, and the Redcoats replied with a devastating volley.

But the day that started so well for the king's troops would end in catastrophe: seventy-three British soldiers dead, two hundred wounded, and the survivors chased back into Boston by the angry colonists. Drawing on diaries, letters, official documents, and memoirs, William H. Hallahan vividly captures the drama of those tense twenty-four hours and shows how they decided the fate of two nations.

From Spain to Syria, the thrilling, untold history of Nazi fugitives turned postwar agents-for America, the Soviets, the Third World, or themselves. After the Second World War, the Allies vowed to hunt Nazi war criminals "to the ends of the earth." Yet many slipped away-or were shielded by the West, in exchange for cooperation in the unfolding confrontation with Communism. Reinhard Gehlen, founder of West German foreign intelligence, welcomed SS operatives into the fold, overestimating their supposed capabilities. This shortsighted decision nearly brought down his cherished service, as the KGB found his Nazi operatives easy to turn or expose. However, Gehlen was hardly alone in this cynical strategy; the American, Soviet, French and Israeli secret services-and nationalist organisations and independence movements-all used former Nazi operatives in the early Cold War. Nazi fugitives became freelance arms traffickers, spies, and assassins, playing crucial roles in the clandestine contest between the superpowers. From posh German restaurants, smuggler-infested Yugoslav ports, and fascist holdouts in Franco's Spain to Damascene safehouses and Egyptian country clubs, these spies created a busy network of influence and information, a uniquely combustible ingredient in the covert struggles of the postwar decades. Unearthing newly declassified revelations from Mossad and other archives, historian Danny Orbach reveals this long-forgotten arena of the Cold War, and its colourful cast of characters. Shrouded in official secrecy, clouded by myth and propaganda, the extraordinary tale of these Nazi agents has never been properly told-until now.

From the bestselling author of The Templars. 'Voyages, battles, sieges and slaughter: Dan Jones's tumultuous and thrilling history of the crusades is one of the best' SUNDAY TIMES. 'A powerful story brilliantly told. Dan Jones writes with pace, wit and insight' HELEN CASTOR. 'A fresh and vibrant account of a conflict that raged across medieval centuries' JONATHAN PHILLIPS. Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades - the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West. From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle. Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto. PRAISE FOR THE TEMPLARS: 'A fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE. 'Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turner out of the dramatic history of the Templars' PHILIPPA GREGORY. 'The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary saga of fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. The Templars is a wonderful book!' BERNARD CORNWELL. 'Told with all Jones's usual verve and panache, this is a dramatic and gripping tale of courage and stupidity, faith and betrayal' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'This is another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' OBSERVER. 'The Templars is exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS. 'Jones carries the Templars through the crusades with clarity and verve. This is unabashed narrative history, fast-paced and full of incident ... Jones tells their story extremely well' SUNDAY TIMES.

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.

This history of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, analyses a period much neglected in historical research: from the end of the civil war in 1939 to the period of democratic change from 1976 to 1979, when the organisation was reconstructed after Francos death. The Franco years were characterised by extraordinary division within the CNT and by the bureaucratisation and ossification of the organisation now part in exile in France. The decimation of the Spanish CNT in 1947 by draconian repression enhanced the role of the exiled CNT, which was now the sole representative of the historic Anarchist movement in Spain. The moribund notion of Anarchism held by the exiled organisation could not attract recruits, and thus new forces drawn to Anarchism in 1960s Spain came through different routes, related, in large part, to the crisis within Marxism. Some of these local activists became convinced of the possibility for a reconstructed CNT, but only if the organisation were renewed. However, the exiled CNT opposed such ideas and used all possible means to undermine the movement for a new CNT. Although the reconstruction of the CNT from 1976 was characterised by the struggle between these two principal forces, the Spanish CNT captured the feelings and enthusiasm of Spanish youth, after the long dark night of Francoism. The libertarian boom was short-lived however, and by 1978 the CNT was in deep crisis, calling for the dissolution of the exiled organisation. The latter, and its allies in Spain, could not allow such a development and organised the Congress of 1979 to prevent this happening. The subsequent irrevocable division of the CNT sheds lights on the political, social and economic fractures that Spain still experiences today. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE

FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CRITIC AND ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF NEGROLAND Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022 'This is one of the most imaginative - and therefore moving - memoirs I have ever read' - Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments Margo Jefferson boldly and brilliantly fuses cultural analysis and memoir to probe race, class, family and art. Taking in the jazz and blues icons whom Jefferson idolised as a child in the 1950s, ideas of what the female body could be - as incarnated by trailblazing Black dancers and athletes - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy reimagined in the artworks of Kara Walker, white supremacy in the novels of Willa Cather, and more, this breathtakingly eloquent account is both a critique and a vindication of the constructed self. 'Margo Jefferson's Constructing a Nervous System is as electric as its title suggests. It takes vital risks, tosses away rungs of the ladder as it climbs, and offers an indispensable, rollicking account of the enchantments, pleasures, costs, and complexities of "imagin[ing] and interpret[ing] what had not imagined you' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts 'If you want to know who we are and where we've been, read Margo Jefferson' - Edmund White, author of A Previous Life 'This is a moving portrait of the life of a brilliant African American woman's mind. Margo Jefferson is so real, her sensibility so literary, her learning such a joy. The gifts of reading her are many' - Darryl Pinckney, author of Sold and Gone