Modern English History

Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.

Inflation isn’t just coming—it’s already here. Hyperinflation is Here is a wake-up call for anyone still clinging to the illusion that central banks can print their way out of crisis. As prices skyrocket, wages stagnate, and savings erode in real time, this book breaks down the truth most economists won’t say out loud: your money is dying—and faster than you think. This survival guide cuts through the noise to explain what inflation really is, the different forms it takes, and why hyperinflation is the final phase of monetary collapse. Through gripping historical case studies—...

By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world's leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this book, Citino charts the path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a "war of movement," inexorably led to Nazi Germany's defeat.

From the immense staff running a lavish Edwardian estate and the lonely maid-of-all-work cooking in a cramped middle-class house to the poor child doing chores in a slightly less poor household, servants were essential to the British way of life. They were hired not only for their skills but also to demonstrate the social standing of their employers - even as they were required to tread softly and blend into the background. More than simply the laboring class serving the upper crust - as popular culture would have us believe - they were a diverse group that shaped and witnessed major changes in the modern home, family, and social order.

A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Prize. In The Quest, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change and conflict, in a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. The Quest tells the inside stories, tackles the tough questions, and reveals surprising insights about coal, electricity, and natural gas.

Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.

History doesn’t just repeat—it compounds. "Boom, Bust, Repeat: How Financial Disasters Shaped Modern Finance" pulls readers into the high-stakes world of market crashes, shady schemes, and government bailouts that built the financial empires we live with today. From Alexander Hamilton’s first bailout in 1792 to the global tremors of the 2008 financial crisis, Joseph Ejike Ojih delivers a page-turning journey through the chaos that created modern money power. This is not your typical economics book. It reads like a thriller. With shocking tales of fake countries like Poyais, reckless ...

From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code severely restricted what Hollywood cinema could depict. This included “any inference” of the lives of homosexuals. In a landmark 1981 book, gay activist Vito Russo famously condemned Hollywood’s censorship regime, lambasting many midcentury films as the bigoted products of a “celluloid closet.”

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna. Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.

In Flee from Heresy, Bishop Athanasius Schneider — raised among persecuted Catholics in the Soviet Union — offers a systematic treatment of more than 130 doctrinal errors, from ancient times down to our own day, along with English translations of the Church’s major anti-heresy documents of the past two centuries.

In August 1969, two teenage Ojibwe cousins, Sher and Kris, leave their Northern Minnesota reservation for the lights of Minneapolis. The girls arrive in the city with only $12, their grandfather's WWII pack, two stainless steel cups, some face makeup, gum, and a lighter. But it's the ancestral connections they are also carrying—to the land and trees, to their family and culture, to love and loss—that shape their journey most. As they search for work, they cross paths with a gay Jewish boy, homeless White and Indian women, and men on the prowl for runaways.

For this series modern history starts about 3 thousand years ago. Many people came to America and mapped the world well before the time of Christopher Columbus and his infusion of Syphilis in Europe. UFOs were seen and their images are now found in old paintings. Five Civil Wars erupt in the United States and the last one is started by tiny Statettes. The blood thirsty annihilators of the Adena and Azatlan are beaten back but win in the end with 300 "American Indian Reservation Countries" inside our borders. On and on we go finding fault after fault with what has been taught. Hopefully, ...

Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red, and Britannia ruled not just the waves but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries.

Known as the twice-born - first into the flesh and again when initiated into their vocation - the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity.

The dawn of flight, the race to the pole, the invention of the Model T....Renowned historian Jim Rasenberger turns his keen eye on America at the dawn of the 20th century - a time when innovation seemed to know no bounds.

Dig deep into the plain meaning of the Bible’s stories and commandments Would you like to know what the Old Testament (Pentateuch) is all about from a Jewish point of view? This book reveals the morals, ethics, and ideas behind the stories and commandments of one of the oldest books in the history of mankind – a book that serves as the foundation of Jewish and Christian religion. Given the difficult Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written and how challenging it is to translate and to explain, the author wanted to offer to the reader the simple meaning of the text (p’shat) in ...

In this fascinating work, winner of the Wolfson Prize for History Mark Mazower uncovers the history of the Balkans with detail and clarity. He explores the reasons for current conflicts and examines the Balkans as a religious, cultural, and economic melting pot for Europe and Asia. Through Robert O'Keefe's articulate narration, listeners will be absorbed by this rich world.

A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history - the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

Following World War II America made a bold stand against the ambitions of an aspiring USSR. Taking the lead with the recently formed NATO and UN in resisting Communist incursions, the US found itself entrenched in the Korean War, fighting the North Koreans, Chinese and Russians simultaneously. Soon afterward America once again assumed the role of resisting Communist expansion, becoming involved in the quagmire of Vietnam. With a new century approaching and the ever changing worldwide political situation resulting in the relative collapse of Communism around the world, the US was to find ...

Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy paints an epic picture of change in an intimate way by telling the stories of the tools, people, and ideas that had far-reaching consequences for all of us. From the plough to artificial intelligence, from Gillette's disposable razor to IKEA's Billy bookcase, best-selling author and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford recounts each invention's own curious, surprising, and memorable story.