Internationally renowned writer Javier Marias is a tireless examiner of the world around us, an enthusiastic debunker of pretensions of every kind, a polymath and a rogue. This selection of his ini...
'Makes a gripping human story out of the wisest and most progressive policy achievement of any government in the history of the world ... the welfare state deserves books this good' Stuart Maconie,...
It is the scene for our hopeful beginnings and our intended ends, and the timeless experiences of coming and going, meeting, greeting and parting. It is an institution with its own rituals and prie...
The biography of the brutal, crazed and incestuous Roman Emperor Caligula, who tried to appoint his own horse consul.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birth...
'An inspiring, rip-roaring read - like the astonishing story it describes' Liam Halligan, Daily TelegraphWhere does prosperity come from, and how does it spread through a society? What ...
On 26 April 1986 at 1.23am a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. While the authorities scrambled to understand what was occurring, workers, engineers, firefight...
A magnificently fresh and unexpected biography of Churchill, by one of Britain's most acclaimed historiansWinston Churchill towers over every other figure in twentieth-century British h...
The 'conquistadores', the early explorers and settlers of Spanish America, have become the stuff of legends and nightmares. In their own time, they were glorified as heroic adventurers, spreading C...
It is May 1940. Western countries are falling into Nazi hands. Britain must prepare to be invaded any day. The future of the world lies on the shoulders of one man. This is the story of how British...
SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERBeloved travel writer Paul Theroux turns his attention to America, exploring the landscapes and communities of his homeland as an outsider for the first t...
From the Pulitzer Prize winning of the acclaimed Ghost Wars, this is the full story of America's grim involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016. In the wake of the terrible shock ...
Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of nine and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of fifteen. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further th...
'The astoundingly well reported and beautifully told story of the downfall of what was once a great American company. A must-read' Bethany McLean, bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Roo...
Franklin D. Roosevelt is a towering figure in twentieth-century history. A masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the Am...
In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join President-elect Barack Obama's national security team, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart ...
Genome sequencing is one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the past thirty years. But what precisely does it involve and how is it developing?In this brilliantly wide-ran...
'This is a funny, pointed love letter to Texas, at once elegiac and clear-eyed' Ben Macintyre, The TimesFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, God Save Texas is a ...
'The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life' Victoria Hislop<...
This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless mill...
The youngest of William the Conqueror's sons, Henry I (1100-35) was never meant to be king, but he was destined to become one of the greatest of all medieval monarchs, both through his own ruthless...