Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress national independence, and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Met...

Richard Freiherr von Rosen was a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier and outstanding panzer commander.After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a Company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak Company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank).Only 489 of these King Tige...

Frenchman Lionel Terray is one of mountaineering history's greatest alpinists, and his autobiography, Conquistadors of the Useless, stands among the "100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time", according to National Geographic Adventure magazine. Following World War II, when France desperately needed successes to heal its wounds, Terray emerged as a national hero, conquering summits atop the planet's highest mountains.This biography of Lionel Terry is filled with f...

The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished.From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling d...

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date"—The Boston Globe, Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling politic...

How did a remote desert people change the course of world history?In the seventh century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire collapsed—defeated by the rising power of Arabia. How did this happen? And why then?In this gripping new history, Nick Holmes offers a fresh view of the end of the Ancient World and the rise of Islam—it wasn't just religion and war that shaped history, but a hidden force also played a vital role—cli...

Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace—leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before—a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own...

At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands.This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narra...

The Beetle is the celebrated Victorian horror story by Richard Marsh, originally published in serialized form in 1897, which at first enjoyed even greater popularity than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in the same year.The Beetle tells the tale of an evil Ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different ...

"They believed they had come to the last turning of the wheel."When the Bloodmoon rose, death came rushing into the world. Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills.While the Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate returns from the underworld bringing omens of despair. But Idris, the young bard, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover a question no one has ever dared to ask--a questio...

This is the strange and fascinating life of Erwin Rommel, from his days as a youth in Imperial Germany—when he had a child out of wedlock with an early girlfriend—through his lauded military exploits during World War I to his death by suicide during World War II, after he attempted a failed coup against Hitler.Rommel was a man of contradictions: a soldier who wrote a bestselling book about World War I, a commander who went from commanding Hitler's bodyguard to trying to kill him, a...

H.G. Wells was known as the father of science fiction—but his creative geniusencompassed far more than a single literary genre. He was also a visionary, asatirist, a sociologist, and an historian.This audio anthology contains some of Wells’ lesser-known stories and is thethird in a series produced by Raconteurs Audio in collaboration with SpokenRealms.This collection includes:The Argonauts of the Air read by Tim BruceThe Treasure in the Forest read...