A biography of Horace, one of the most popular poets from antiquity, revealing the little-known man behind his famous lines“Peter Stothard is a master of modern writing about ancient Rome, of vividly bringing to life its poetry and its poets.”—Mary BeardQuintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BCE) wrote some of ancient Rome’s greatest poetry, melding languages and cultures with youthful ideals and a realist’s recognition of the dictatorial world aro...

The story of Rome’s richest man, who died a humiliating desert death in search of military gloryMarcus Licinius Crassus (115–53 BCE) was a modern man in an ancient world, a pioneer disrupter of finance and politics, and the richest man of the last years of the Roman republic. Without his catastrophic ambition, this trailblazing tycoon might have quietly entered history as Rome’s first modern political financier. Instead, Crassus and his son led an army on an unprov...

Many men killed Julius Caesar. Only one man was determined to kill the killers. From the spring of 44 BC through one of the most dramatic and influential periods in history, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, exacted vengeance on the assassins of the Ides of March, not only on Brutus and Cassius, immortalized by Shakespeare, but all the others too, each with his own individual story. The last assassin left alive was one of the lesser-known: Cassius Parmensis was a...

A classicist retraces the ancient journey taken by the Spartacus and his army of rebels through Italy in the first century BC Gladiator War.In the final century of the first Roman Republic, an army of slaves undertook a historic revolt. Led by the gladiator Spartacus, its success was something no one before had ever known. The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71BC, bringing both fears and hop...

A unique and entertaining history of the Roman Empire's first dynasty 14 CE: The first Roman emperor is dead. A second is about to succeed. The Forum of Rome, once fought over so fiercely, has become hardly more than a museum. The house of all power is up above on the Palatine Hill, about to become the birthplace of Western bureaucracy, a warren of banqueting and bedrooms, a treacherous household where it takes special talents to survive. This is a history of ancient Rome'...

A unique, unprecedented eyewitness account of the thirty most critical days of Tony Blair’s political career as Prime Minister, from 10 March 2003 to the end of the second Gulf War, written by the former editor of The Times.For thirty extraordinary days, in March and April 2003, Tony Blair defied street protests, party revolts, allied anger and government resignations in order to send British troops to Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein.What was it like inside Downing Street during...

"This unconventional account of the Margaret Thatcher years by a former editor of the Times . . . mixes reminiscence, gossip, and classical philosophy." — The New YorkerA year after the death of Margaret Thatcher, a young historian arrives to ask Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and former editor of the Times, some sharp questions about his memories of the Thatcher era. During the interview the offices from...

A biography of Horace, one of the most popular poets from antiquity, revealing the little-known man behind his famous linesQuintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BCE) wrote some of ancient Rome's greatest poetry, melding languages and cultures with youthful ideals and a realist's recognition of the dictatorial world around him. Horace is famed for his fine phrases, lyric sex, and guidance on how to live, but he was a poet maddened by war, and many of his most self-revealin...

The story of Rome's richest man, who died a humiliating desert death in search of military gloryMarcus Licinius Crassus (115–53 BCE) was a modern man in an ancient world, a pioneer disrupter of finance and politics, and the richest man of the last years of the Roman republic. Without his catastrophic ambition, this trailblazing tycoon might have quietly entered history as Rome's first modern political financier. Instead, Crassus and his son led an army on an unprov...

One of the most enigmatic figures of antiquity, Tiberius lacked the imperial splendour of his great predecessor Augustus and the excesses of many of his successors, and has been overlooked by history. Yet this compelling study offers a portrait of a complex and contradictory man, both emperor and exile, tyrant and recluse.Drawing on a wealth of ancient sources as well as contemporary classical scholarship, Iskander Rehman engages in a nuanced and multidisciplinary examination of Ti...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a...

New York Times BestsellerNational BestsellerWith Sapiens and Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari first explored the past, then the future of humankind, garnering the praise of no less than Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few, and selling millions of copies in the over 30 countries it was published. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he devotes himself to the present....