On 8 February 1421 the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, 500 foot long junks made from the finest teak and mahogany, were led by Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last over two years and circle the entire globe.<br><br>When they returned Zhu Di had fallen from power and China was be... read more

Well known for his histories of Norman Sicily, Venice, the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean, John Julius Norwich has now turned his attention to the oldest continuing institution in the world, tracing the papal line down the centuries from St Peter himself - traditionally (though by no means historically) the first pope - to the present Benedict XVI. Of the 280-odd holders of the supreme office, some have unques-tionably been saints; others have wallowed in unspeakable iniquity. One was said to have been a woman - and an Engl... read more

"The Black Sea" is at once a homage to an ocean and its shores and an amazingly readable meditation on Eurasian history from the earliest times to the present. It evokes the culture, history and politics of the volatile region which surrounds the Black Sea. Ascherson recalls the world of Herodotus and Aeschylus; Ovid's place of exile on what is now the coast of Romania; the decline and fall of Byzantium; the mysterious fastness of the Christian Goths; the Tatar Khanates; the growth of Russian power across the grasslands, and the ce... read more

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcement and supplies within eight weeks

Did the events of September 11 really change the world? Why would a person agree to become a suicide bomber? How effective are our intelligence agencies? Should the Rudd Government bring our troops home from Iraq? Would a national ID card system make Australians safer? In his new book, Keith Suter, author of the popular Local Notebook and Global Notebook, answers all the questions you're too afraid to ask about terrorism. In simple, no-nonsense language, Suter gives a concise overview of the history and politics of terrorism, exam... read more

Profiles Australian women who travelled to France at different times through history and who formulated their impressions in fiction, diaries, letters, autobiographies between 1880 and 1945. This book explores how the women adapted to new environments in a world of changing attitudes to feminine education, professionalism and sexuality.

Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy takes the discipline of logic and the mind back to its roots. Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock'n roll'. First published 2000.

Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, was the archetypal 'Renaissance man': a brilliant soldier, scholar and ally of the pope, he spent much of the vast wealth on commissioning artists to decorate the city. Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of the neighbouring city of Rimini, was also a brilliant soldier and generous patron of the arts. He and Federigo were locked in an epic feud which saw them fight as mercenaries for and against just about every Italian ruler of note, so long as the other was on the opposite side. Together they epito... read more

Now in paperback, this is an exhilarating portrait of the era of invention, glamour and excess from one of the brightest young stars of mainstream history writing. Bracketed by the catastrophes of the Great War and the Wall Street Crash, 1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, wild all-night parties, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene flourishing under prohibition. But the period was also punctuated by momentous events - the political show tri... read more

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A reconsideration of the first modern historian and his methods from a renowned scholar.
The grandeur and power of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War have enthralled readers, historians, and statesmen alike for two and a half millennia, and the work and its author have had an enduring influence on those who think about international relations and war, especially in our own time. In Thucydides, Donald Kagan, one of our foremost classics scholars, illuminates the great historian and his work both by examining him in the context ... read more

From classical times to the present day, this highly illustrated book surveys the enduring human need to imagine and construct ideal worlds. Gregory Claeys, a leading scholar in the field, surveys the influence of the idea of utopia on history, literature, art, architecture and religious and political thought, and covers the most significant utopias throughout history, whether envisaged or actually attempted. Complete with a wealth of photographs, paintings, engravings, maps, documents, posters and film stills, the book is a compel... read more

A clear, chronological narrative exploring many of the ethical dilemmas posed for real people during and after the Second World War. Literature on the Second World War is voluminous. In 'Moral Combat', however, Michael Burleigh achieves what few historians can claim to have done; by exploring the moral sentiment of entire societies and their leaders, and how this changed under the impact of total war, he presents readers with an entirely fresh perspective of this conflict. Opening with the 'predators' - Mussolini, Hitler, Prince ... read more

The next ten years will be a time of massive transition. The wars in the Islamic world will be subsiding, and terrorism will become something we learn to live with. China will be encountering its crisis. We will be moving from a time when financial crises dominate the world to a time when labor shortages will begin to dominate. The new century will be taking shape in the next decade. In The Next Decade, George Friedman offers readers a provocative and endlessly fascinating prognosis for the immediate future. Using Machiavelli's Th... read more

In 1787 a convoy of eleven ships, carrying about 1500 people, set out from England for Botany Bay. According to the conventional account, it was a shambolic affair: under-prepared, poorly equipped and ill-disciplined. Robert Hughes condemned the organisers' "muddle and lack of foresight", while Manning Clark described scenes of "indescribable misery and confusion". In The First Fleet: The Real Story, Alan Frost draws on previously forgotten records to debunk these persistent myths. He shows that the voyage was in fact meticulously ... read more

Ever since the 1920s the popular legend of the French Foreign Legion has been formed by P.C. Wren's novel BEAU GESTE - a world of remote forts, warrior tribes, and desperate men of all nationalities enlisting under pseudonyms to fight and die under the desert sun. As with all cliches, the reality is far richer and more surprising than this. In this book Martin Windrow describes desert battles and famous last stands in gripping detail - but he also shows exactly what the Foreign Legion were doing in North Africa in the first place. ... read more

Books have been written, films made, we have raised the Titanic and watched her go down again on numerous occasions, but out of the wreckage Frances Wilson spins a new epic: when the ship hit the iceberg on 14 April 1912 and a thousand men prepared to die, J Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. Accused of cowardice, Ismay became, according to one headline, 'The Most Talked-of Man in the World'. The first victim of a press ... read more

Why does the West rule? Eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing uniquely on 15,000 years of history and archaeology, and the methods of social science. In the middle of the eighteenth century, British entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal and the world changed forever. Factories, railways and gunboats then propelled the West's rise to power, and computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Today, however, many worry that the ... read more

The second novel in the chronology of Vidal's epic CHRONICLES OF EMPIRE, embodying the passage of American history.

An account of life as a sheep-shearer.