This "fresh and compelling" study sheds light on the dramatic military, political, and cultural forces that led Greece to liberation in the 19th century ( Wall Street Journal).In The Greek War of Independence, Oxford scholar David Brewer presents a vividly detailed and comprehensive study of one of history's most heroic and bloody struggles for independence. This was the revolution of the Romantic Age, inspiring painters, poets, and patriots the wo...

For almost four hundred years, between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Greek War of Independence, the history of Greece is shrouded in mystery. What was life really like for the Greeks under Ottoman rule? Was it a period of unremitting exploitation and enslavement for the Greeks until they were finally able to rise up against their Turkish overlords, as is the traditional, Greek nationalistic view? Or did the Greeks derive some benefit from Turkish rule? How did the Greeks and T...

During the 1940s Greece was torn apart twice, first by World War II and second by Civil War.Beginning in 1941, the occupation of Greece by Germany was intensely brutal. Children starved on the streets of Athens. The Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust. Heroic acts of resistance - performed in concert with the SOE - were met with vicious reprisals. When Greece was finally freed from Nazi rule in 1944, the fractured and embittered nation became engulfed in civil war, as conflict...

The story of the discovery of nearly 300 bird species new to science since 1960.Amazing as it might sound, ornithologists are still discovering several bird species each year that are completely new to science. These aren't all obscure brown birds on tiny islands – witness the bizarre Bare-faced Bulbul from Laos (2009), spectacular Araripe Manakin from Brazil (1998), or gaudy Bugun Liocichla from north-east India (2006).Birds New to Science documen...

An authoritative history of the Knights of St. John, from Jerusalem to Malta, told by the bestselling author of The Great Siege.Known by many names through their centuries-long career, The Knights Hospitaller of Saint John dedicated themselves to defending the poor and sick. First formed in Jerusalem during the Crusades of the eleventh century, the Order of Saint John grew in wealth and power rivaled only by the Knights Templar. They survived exile from the...

If your response to a mention of the Wars of the Roses, the Sumerians or the Reformation is, ‘Hmm, I’ve heard of that – what was that again?’, then this is the book for you.This entertaining yet informative book travels back through time to fill in those embarrassing gaps in your knowledge, from the invasions of Britain, the Renaissance and the Cold War, to the American, French and Russian Revolutions, the World Wars ... and everything else you have forgotten from your school histo...

**Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize • One of The Economist's top history books of the yearFrom one of our leading historians, the definitive history of the Greek War of Independence**The Greek War of Independence was an unlikely cause, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it, as Europeans and Americans embra...

King Alexander III 'the Great' of Macedon was one of the greatest military commanders the world has ever known. This book seeks to dispel some of the myths which have grown up around him and to provide an up-to-date account of his life. This includes the Macedonian background and Alexander's early years, his campaigns in Thrace and Illyria and the destruction of Thebes, the invasion of the Persian Empire and the battles which led to its conquest, his expeditions to India and finally his de...

This lively and dramatic book brings roaring to life the grand sweep of 5,000 years of history in the cradle of civilization.A wonderfully illustrated account of the civilizations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean, The Middle Sea represents the culmination of a great historian’s unparalleled art and scholarship. John Julius Norwich provides brilliant portraits of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, th...

A fascinating biography of Ottoman Greece and Albania's notorious despot—a major player in the power struggles of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the life of a petty tyrant in an obscure corner of the Ottoman Empire became the stuff of legend. What propelled this cold-blooded archetype of Oriental despotism, grandly known as the Lion of Yanina and the Balkan Napoleon, into the consciousness of Western rulers and the ge...

The international bestseller: E. H. Gombrich’s sweeping history of the world, for the curious of all ages“All stories begin with ‘Once upon a time.’ And that’s just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time.” So begins A Little History of the World, an engaging and lively book written for readers both young and old. Rather than focusing on dry facts and dates, E. H. Gombrich vividly brings the full span of human experience on Earth to l...

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still.Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize • Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize • Win...