It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amid grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. The first of two volumes, The Story of the Jews spans the millennia and the continents—from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes readers to unimagined places: a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia, a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings, the palm...

It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amid grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. The first of two volumes, The Story of the Jews spans the millennia and the continents—from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes readers to unimagined places: a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia, a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings, the palm...

A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon SchamaCities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.Characteris...

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens’s most popular and dramatic stories.It begins on a muddy English road in an atmosphere charged with mystery and it ends in the Paris of the Revolution with one of the most famous acts of self-sacrifice in literature. In between lies one of Dickens’s most exciting books—a historical novel that, generation after generation, has given readers access to the profound human dramas t...

The world is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Over 300,000 are dead in Syria, and one and half million are either injured or disabled. Four and a half million people are trying to flee the country. And Syria is just one of a growing number of failed or failing states in the Middle East and North Africa. How should developed nations respond to human suffering on this mass scale? Do the prosperous societies of the West, including Canada and the U.S., have a mo...

“Schama is a masterful stylist and storyteller.”—Boston Globe“A writer of gorgeous prose.”—Washington PostThe ever erudite, always delightfully curious Simon Schama returns with Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, a wonderful compendium of thirty provocative, witty, enlightening, and stimulating essays previously published but collected in a single volume for the first time. One of our most distinguished historians and commentators, Schama, the acclaimed author of...

“Simon Schama has re-examined the role of Baron Edmond de Rothschild [1845-1934] and his son James [1878-1957] in the Jewish settlement of Palestine... He refutes Herzl’s charge that the colonies were a ‘rich man’s pastime to while away what would otherwise have been idle hours’ by illustrating how Baron Edmond’s immediate concern in 1882 for the sanctuary of Eastern European pogrom victims was, by the turn of the century, translated into a total commitment to the development of a self-sup...

Simon Schama brings Britain to life through its portraits, as seen in the five-part BBC series The Face of Britain and the major National Portrait Gallery exhibitionChurchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century, the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life, a surgeon-artist making studies of wo...

From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change. Schama’s approach, weaving in and out of priv...

Simon Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, Schama recreates in precise detail a nation's mental state. He tells of bloody uprisings and beached whales, of the cult of hygiene and the plague of tobacco, of thrifty housewives and profligate tu...

A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon SchamaCities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.Characteris...

A celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, including documentaries and readings as heard on BBC Radio 4.2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, a seminal text that remains the most widely published and influential book in the English language.Once described as 'the noblest monument of English prose', it has been recognised for centuries as both a religious and a literary classic.This compilation features James Naughti...