16th Century

This deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history examines two of the greatest minds of European history - Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther - and their heated rivalry....

From author Eric Metaxas comes a brilliant and inspiring biography of the most influential man in modern history, Martin Luther, in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation....

In The Faithful Executioner, Harrington vividly re-creates a life filled with stark contrasts, from the young apprentice's rigorous training under his executioner father....

Catherine de Medici's father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement's exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, a diplomat par excellence....

A sweeping, authoritative history of 16th-century Spain and its legendary conquistadors, whose ambitious and morally contradictory campaigns propelled a small European kingdom to become one of the formidable empires in the world....

The story of the 16th-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific.

Philip II is not only the most famous king in Spanish history, but one of the most famous monarchs in English history: the man who married Mary Tudor and later launched the Spanish Armada against her sister Elizabeth I....

A groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world....

From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual upheaval of the 16th century. Martin Luther's challenge to church authority forced Christians to examine their beliefs in ways that shook the foundations of their religion....

"Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same." These were the heartbreaking words of a 17-year-old girl, Lady Jane Grey, as she stood on the scaffold awaiting death on a cold February morning in 1554....

Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the 200-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day....

Illegitimate children, adulterous queens, impotent kings, and a whole dynasty resting on their shoulders....

The life of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), ruler of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long intrigued biographers....

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre....

Nothing drove Henry VIII, England's wealthiest and most powerful king, more than producing a legitimate male heir and perpetuating his dynasty....

Grounded in excellent primary source research, Thomas Cromwell gives an inside look at a monarchy that has captured the Western imagination for centuries....

Now an esoteric of legal and criminal history, A Hangman's Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Franz Schmidt's executions, which included hangings, beheadings, and other methods, as well as details of each capital crime and the reason for the punishment....

In this dazzling global history that charts five centuries of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that Protestants made the modern world....

This is the story of Elizabeth I's inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life....

What was life like for Shakespeare's first audiences? In this fascinating series, Neil MacGregor attempts to answer these questions by examining 20 objects from that turbulent period....

Robert Goodwin delves into previously unrecorded sources to bring a tumultuous and exciting period to life. Spain is a revealing portrait of an empire at the height of its power and a world at the dawn of a new age....

Tracing the family's path from staunch loyalty to the Crown, to passive resistance and on to increasing activism, Childs illustrates the pressures and painful choices that confronted....

The most profound characteristic of Western Europe in the Middle Ages was its cultural and religious unity, a unity secured by a common alignment with the Pope in Rome....

At the start of the 16th century, England was hardly involved in the wider world, and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city....

During the long 18th century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. Author Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East....