This is the life story of one of the most interesting human beings who ever lived. A political genius who remade Europe and united Germany between 1862 and 1890 by the sheer power of his great personality. It takes the reader into close proximity with a human being of almost superhuman abilities. We see him through the eyes of his secretaries, his old friends, his neighbours, his enemies and the press. Otto von Bismarck 'made' Germany but never 'ruled' it. For twenty eight years he acted a...

German and Italian fascist armies in the Second World War treated the Jews quite differently. Jews who fell into the hands of the German army ended up in concentration camps; none of those taken by the Italians suffered the same fate. Yet the protectors of the Jews were no philo-Semites, nor were they (often) great respecters of human life. Some of those same officers had sanctioned savage atrocities against Ethiopians and Arabs in the years before the war. Jonathan Steinberg uses this rem...

Revised and completely updated edition of Jonathan Steinberg's classic account of Switzerland's unique political and economic system. Why Switzerland? examines the complicated voting system that allows citizens to add, strike out, or vote more than once for candidates, with extremely complicated systems of proportional representation; a collective and consensual executive leadership in both state and church; and the creation of the Swiss idea of citizenship, with tolerance of differences o...

This is the life story of one of the most interesting human beings who ever lived. A political genius who remade Europe and united Germany between 1862 and 1890 by the sheer power of his great personality. It takes the reader into close proximity with a human being of almost superhuman abilities. We see him through the eyes of his secretaries, his old friends, his neighbours, his enemies and the press. Otto von Bismarck 'made' Germany but never 'ruled' it. For twenty eight years he acted a...

An exciting thriller with surprising twists and turns - When the law suddenly changes sides...Alex, a former inspector, has retired from the police force after a serious incident - but the shadows of the past won't let him go. When his son Steven mysteriously disappears, a nerve-wracking race against time begins. What begins as a search for the truth soon develops into a shocking revelation that leads deep into the past of an influential public prosecutor and an unscrupulous lawyer...

Generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs) allow us to write quantum theory in a purely operational language and enable us to formulate other, vastly different theories. As it turns out, there is no canonical way to integrate the notion of subsystems within the framework of convex operational theories. Sections can be seen as generalization of subsystems and describe situations where not all possible observables can be implemented. Jonathan Steinberg discusses the mathematical foundations o...

Switzerland is a special and fascinating place. Its unique institutions, its direct democracy, multi-member executives, absence of strikes, communal autonomy, its universal military service, its wealth, and four national languages make it interesting in itself. But it has wider significance, in representing the 'Europe that did not happen', the Europe that escaped the centralisation of state and economy associated with the modern world. Today, there is a new special feature. Switzerland is...

A lively and fascinating narrative history about the birth of the modern world.Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume—the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World—chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition.Popes continue to preach crusade, but the hope of a Christian empire comes to a bloody end at the walls of Constantinople. Arist...

A masterful narrative of the Middle Ages, when religion became a weapon for kings all over the world.From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T’ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. B...

King of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most important - and most controversial - figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe. But how much power did he really have?The acclaimed historian Christopher Clark follows Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and the collapse of Germany in 1918, to his last days. He asks: ...

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 is a compelling account of a country that played a pivotal role in Europe's fortunes and fundamentally shaped our world.Prussia began as a medieval backwater, but transformed itself into a major European power and the force behind the creation of the German empire, until it was finally abolished by the Allies after the Second World War....

'Cannon has a keen descriptive eye and a striking, lyrical turn of phrase . . . a rich, warm, authoritative book' TLSThis is the definitive tale of how our island history is written in stone.The Stones of Britain is about how rocks make places, exploring the connection between geology and landscape, the stones beneath the surface and the history that has played out above it. It movingly investigates the diverse character o...