Books – Detail

A page-turning exploration of a warrior king's life, loves, and battles, bringing the facts to life with a novelist's eye for detail and drama.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.

Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history.

Drawing on completely new sources, Ireland's most brilliant historian shows how important the Irish War of Independence was for understanding Ireland now.

Black Citymakers explores a century of socioeconomic, cultural, and political history in the Black Seventh Ward, creating a new understanding of the political agency of black residents, leaders and activists in twentieth century urban change.

How did America turn itself from a largely agrarian society into the sophisticated, industrial and military colossus it became in the twentieth century? PJ Coë illuminates the part played by influential Britons in this astonishing transformation, from the eve to the sunset of the nineteenth century.

The Devil Wears Rothko charts the explosive demise of Knoedler Gallery, one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious art galleries, with detailed and salacious insight into the art fraud scandal of the century.

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle–heartland of the North's defining industry–and the Murder Triangle–the Badlands roamed by the Glenanne gang of security forces colluding with loyalist paramilarites.

In this deliciously detailed and gossipy history of the Parthenon (AKA, Elgin) Marbles, award-winning poet and writer A. E. Stallings discusses the removal of the Marbles from the Athenian Acropolis, their misadventures before and after installation in the British Museum (from shipwreck to boxing matches), and the debate over their future and possible reunion in Greece.

A magisterial account of one of the worst disasters to strike humankind--the Great Irish Potato Famine--conveyed as lyrical narrative history from the acclaimed author of The Great Mortality

Go to any ancient building in the land and there will be interesting and exciting stories presented to the visitor. Buildings archaeologist James Wright explains and unpicks the development of these myths and investigates the underlying truths behind them. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more engaging, romantic and compelling than the myths themselves.

The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Strange Trip and the publicist of the Grateful Dead, a riveting social history of everything that led up to the 1960s counterculture movement.

An epic reported history of National Public Radio that reveals the unlikely story of one of America’s most celebrated but least understood media empires.

Attempts to answer the vexing question of why the great preponderance of America’s patterned brick architecture is located in the ancient colony of West New Jersey, a land mass covering roughly half of present-day New Jersey. Thompson expands his story well beyond southern New Jersey, beginning in England, searching for the antecedents, both practical and artistic, to this folk-art. He also examines the patterned brick architecture found in other American colonies and its meaning vis-a-vis those building found in West New Jersey.

Tells the story of the Group of Thirteen, a collective of chieftains and lamas from the regions of Kham and Amdo, who sought to preserve Tibet’s cultural diversity in exile. A compelling narrative of a tumultuous time that reveals the complexities of Tibetan identities then and now.

A richly illustrated history of the glittering world of queer artistic life in the 1920s and ’30s.

A masterful history of a country transformed over 25 years, from Ireland's most distinguished historian.

A “vigorous and engaging” (Fintan O’Toole, New Yorker) new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster

From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle to belong.

Portrays the dramatic transformation of the investment banking business in recent decades through the tumultuous saga of one firm (Greenhill & Co., a specialist in mergers and acquisitions) and one man (Scott Bok, the longtime CEO of that firm). Written in the style of an adventure tale, this book is also a "coming of age" story for a naive young man who came to Wall Street―as thousands like him do each year―and managed to grab a front-row seat for a period of epic change.