European history

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today.Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all...

A panoramic history of the antiquarians whose discoveries transformed Renaissance culture and gave rise to new forms of art and knowledgeIn the early fifteenth century, a casket containing the remains of the Roman historian Livy was unearthed at a...

How a nineteenth-century lawsuit over the estate of a wealthy Tunisian Jew shines new light on the history of belongingIn the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing...

On July 10, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling classic of Holocaust history, Jan Gross reveals how...

A comprehensive survey of the work of this most influential Florentine artist and teacherAndrea del Verrocchio (c. 14351488) was one of the most versatile and inventive artists of the Italian Renaissance. He created art across media, from his spectacular...

Sicily and the strategies of empire in the poetic imagination of classical and medieval EuropeIn the first century BC, Cicero praised Sicily as Rome's first overseas province and confirmed it as the mythic location for the abduction of Proserpina, known...

What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today's 'sculpture wars' - Mary Beard tells the story of how...

Waterloo Sunrise is a panoramic and multifaceted account of modern London during the transformative years of the sixties and seventies, when a city still bearing the scars of war emerged as a vibrant yet divided metropolis. John Davis paints lively and...

How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entitiesHistorians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern...

Among nature's most artful creations, shells have long inspired the curiosity and passion of artisans, artists, collectors, and thinkers. Conchophilia delves into the intimate relationship between shells and people, offering an unprecedented account of...

The first comprehensive account of how and why architects learned to communicate through colour.Architectural draw traces the use of colour in European architectural drawings and prints, revealing how this phenomenon reflected the professional anxieties...

In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the...

Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights-glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth-embedded in myth, legends, and...

A compelling exploration of how our pursuit of happiness makes us unhappyWe live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change -...

A comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important athletic, religious, and political sites in the ancient Greek and Roman worldThe memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient...

The first major history of the bravura movement in European paintingThe painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a...

Washington Post, One of E.J. Dionne Jr.'s Recommendations A major new history of how democracy became the dominant political force in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century What happened in the years following World War II to create a...

From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender-masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many...

A cultural and literary history of mountains in classical antiquity.The mountainous character of the Mediterranean was a crucial factor in the history of the ancient Greek and Roman world. The Folds of Olympus is a cultural and literary history that...

*Shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Book Award**Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University*"Winner of the PROSE Award in European History, Association of American Publishers*An innovative history of deep social and...