Mark Greengrass's gripping, major, original account of Europe in an era of tumultuous changeThis latest addition to the landmark Penguin History of Europe series is a fascinating study of 16th and 17th century Europe and the fundamental changes which led to the collapse of Christendom and established the geographical and political frameworks of Western Europe as we know it.From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual uphe...

This study was the first systematic attempt to reach behind the myth of Henri IV - famous for having brought order to France after long civil war - and explores the reality of his achievement. This Second Edition has been substantially updated.

This unique book critically evaluates the virtual representation of the past through digital media. A distinguished team of leading experts in the field approach digital research in history and archaeology from contrasting viewpoints, including philosophical, methodological and technical. They illustrate the challenges involved in representing the past digitally by focusing on specific cases of a particular historical period, place or technical problem.

One of the most enigmatic figures in history, Nostradamus - apothecary, astrologer and soothsayer - is a continual source of fascination. Indeed, his predictions are so much the stock-in-trade of the wildest merchants of imminent Doom that one could be forgiven for forgetting that Michel de Nostredame, 1503-1566, was a figure firmly rooted in the society of the French Renaissance.In this bold new account of the life and work of Nostradamus, Denis Crouzet shows that any attempt to i...

ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016'A scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar... a veritable tour de force' Richard Overy, New Statesman'Transnational history at its finest ... .. social, political and cultural themes swirl together in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty' Gerard DeGroot, The Times'Dazzlingly erudite and entertaini...

From one of Britain's most distinguished historians and the bestselling author of Hitler, this is the definitive history of a divided Europe, from the aftermath of the Second World War to the present.After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the 20th century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as having gone 'to Hell and back', the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improv...

'Superb ... likely to become a classic' ObserverIn the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a seco...

'The most accessible, up-to-date introduction to its subject ... does full justice to the multifarious forces at work in high gothic Europe' Daily TelegraphThe years from AD 1000 to the beginning of the fourteenth century were the most formative period in European history: a time of intense social, political, cultural and religious change. In this definitive work one of the world's leading medievalists explores a confident, dynamic age, far removed from ou...

Cursed Kings tells the story of the destruction of France by the madness of its king and the greed and violence of his family. In the early fifteenth century, France had gone from being the strongest and most populous nation state of medieval Europe to suffering a complete internal collapse and a partial conquest by a foreign power. It had never happened before in the country's history - and it would not happen again until 1940.Into the void left by this domestic catastrop...

'Let the nations rejoice: this history of Europe is a truly glorious book' John Adamson, Sunday TimesThe Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history – from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, ...

To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a 'classical Europe', using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures.As this consistently fresh and surprising new book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engage...

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century.Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas.