In this magnificently illustrated cultural history—the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews—Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish experience, from their beginnings as an ancient tribal people to the opening of the New World in 1492.It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds.This epic of world histo...

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 most dramatic account so far of the extraordinary expeience of slaves in and after the American Revolution. . . . Schama’s gift for plunging us into the very center of the action makes reading an exhilarating and often moving experience.”—Daily TelegraphIf you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be e...

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...

In the second volume of this magnificently illustrated cultural history, the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews, Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish people from 1492 through the end of nineteenth century.A sweeping work of narrative history, volume two of this epic incorporates the stories of many who seldom figure in Jewish histories: not just the rabbis and the philosophers but a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Ge...

“With eloquence, wit, passion, and irony, The American Future traces the history of an idea: that of our national destiny….A book of beautiful writing, peppered with wisecracks, slashed with rapier thrusts.” —Philadelphia InquirerA De Tocqueville for the 21st century, Simon Schama, NBCC Award winning author of Rough Crossings offers an essential, historical, long view analysis of the American character in The American Future. Shama examines four ...

Author of a number of celebrated works, including the bestselling The Story of the Jews and Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama's latest book fuses history and art to create a tour de force of narrative sweep and illuminating insight. Using images from works-paintings, photographs, lithographs, etchings, sketches-found in London's National Portrait Gallery, The Face of Britain weaves together an account of their composition, framed by the...

A swift history of one of the most enduring and changeable forms of hatredFrom ancient times to the present, antisemitism has proved to be one of the most enduring and adaptable forms of hatred. Across centuries of world-changing ideas and upheavals – from the rise of Christianity and Islam to the Enlightenment, nationalism, globalism and great leaps of technology – the Jewish people have served as a dark mirror for society's fears, anxieties and hatreds. Why does this hostility ...

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...