“A magisterial history” (The Guardian) of humanity’s greatest natural disaster—the Black Death—that reveals the true global impact and terrible human cost of this calamity, from the renowned author of The Crusades and The Greatest Knight.“Terrific—and truly terrifying. Thomas Asbridge puts a human face—or rather multiple faces—on the Black Death.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.In the mid-fourteenth centu...

From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume military history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land.Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by both faiths. Over the two hundred years that followed, Islam and Christian...

'A nuanced and sophisticated analysis... Exhilarating' Sunday TelegraphNine hundred years ago, one of the most controversial episodes in Christian history was initiated. The Pope stated that, in spite of the apparently pacifist message of the New Testament, God actually wanted European knights to wage a fierce and bloody war against Islam and recapture Jerusalem. Thus was the First Crusade born.Foc...

Richard I's reign is both controversial and seemingly contradictory. One of England's most famous medieval monarchs and a potent symbol of national identity, he barely spent six months on English soil during a ten-year reign and spoke French as his first language. Contemporaries dubbed him the 'Lionheart', reflecting a carefully cultivated reputation for bravery, prowess and knightly virtue, but this supposed paragon of chivalry butchered close to 3,000 prisoners in cold blood on a single ...

In The Greatest Knight, renowned historian Thomas Asbridge draws upon the thirteenth-century biography and an array of other contemporary evidence to present a compelling account of William Marshal's life and times. Asbridge charts the unparalleled rise to prominence of a man bound to a code of honor yet driven by unquenchable ambition.Marshal was the true Lancelot of his era—a peerless warrior and paragon of chivalry. As a five-year-old boy, William was sentenced to execu...

Narrated by Derek PerkinsFrom a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume military history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land.Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by both faiths. Over the tw...

“A magisterial history” (The Guardian) of humanity’s greatest natural disaster—the Black Death—that reveals the true global impact and terrible human cost of this calamity, from the renowned author of The Crusades and The Greatest Knight.“Terrific—and truly terrifying. Thomas Asbridge puts a human face—or rather multiple faces—on the Black Death.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.In the mid-fourteenth centu...

“An illuminating book that examines where Mr. Musk came from and the episodes that shaped his worldview. In many ways it is the inverse of Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography. . . . the authors provide a portrait of his psyche that is arguably more revealing. . . . the resulting book is, you might say, a Musk-read.” –The Economist"Muskism cuts straight to the core of the man and the moment, explaining how a mercurial, conspiracy-prone,...

'[An] elegant and forensic double portrait setting Greene, that sociologist of sin, alongside the Kremlin's golden boy Philby, with the lengthening shadow of the cold war falling between them ... both his subjects make for terrific copy ... Part of the pleasure of Verkaik's book is the vicarious glide through their parallel rake's progresses.' - Pratinav Anil, Guardian'A wholly fascinating account of an extraordinary friendship. Robert Verkaik's nu...

From the acclaimed author of In the Shadow of the Empress comes the thrilling chronicle of two of the most influential and glamorous women in nineteenth-century Europe—Elisabeth, empress of Austria, and Eugénie, empress of France—and their efforts to rule amid the scandal, intrigue, tragedy, and violence of their era.When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respectively, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of...

A powerful, unsparing new history of World War II, recasting the conflict as a brutal struggle for survival among declining and ascendant imperial powersIn popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of an American-led democratic order.In Scorched Earth, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin dispatches the myth of World War II as a good war. Inst...

Bloomsbury presents The Black Prince by Michael Jones, read by Hamilton McLeod.A major new biography of the Black Prince.'A clear-eyed and thrilling vision of the man behind the legend' DAN JONES.'Pacy, vivid and extremely readable' TLS.In 1346, at the age of sixteen, he won his spurs at Crécy; nine years later he conducted a brutal raid across Languedoc; in 1356 he captured the king of France at Poitiers; as lord of Aquitaine he ruled a vast swathe of southw...