Charles River Editors

The United Kingdom is an ancient land steeped in history and tradition, filled with prehistoric ruins, majestic castles, and a countryside sculpted from millennia of human habitation. Thus, it is not surprising that many believe the area is filled with ghosts....

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, lasting four years and inflicting over a million casualties. Historians have studied the biggest battles ever since....

Though often remembered today merely for the modern word “epicurean,” which has become associated with luxurious food and refined tastes, the actual philosophy of Epicureanism was far more complex and intellectually ambitious than simple indulgence.

The library of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, is as significant in the study of early Christianity as the writings of the Essenes to the understanding of Judaism during the time of the Roman occupation....

Yugoslavia was arguably one of the most unusual geopolitical creations of the 20th century. The Yugoslav state had never existed in any historical sense, and the ties that bound together its constituent peoples were tenuous at best. Listen to learn more about Yugoslavia....

Europe’s attempts to appease Hitler failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia by 1939. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1 of that year....

The long agony of the “sick man of Europe”, an expression used by the tsar of Russia to depict the falling Ottoman Empire, could almost blind people to its incredible power and history....

As soon as man discovered writing, he began engaging in historiography (historical writing and philosophy), but paleoanthropology only really began in the late 1800s....

Well beyond the breadth of human existence, major land masses have through the ages reformed into disparate configurations on an inevitable path toward apocalyptic continental collisions. Within that process, our present tectonic reality shows no sign of slowing....

The Spanish Civil War: The History and Legacy of the Controversial Conflict That Established Francisco Franco’s Dictatorship in Spain examines one of the 20th century’s most important wars and how it affected the world. You will learn about the Spanish Civil War like never before....

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself....

The phenomenon of “conspiracy” or “fringe” theories has always been with people, which makes sense since captivating and entertaining hypotheses arouse the public interest with seemingly sound conclusions that are often based on incomplete, unrelated, or erroneous suppositions....

Mention the 18th century Royal Navy and visions come to mind of swashbuckling sailors swinging from rope to rope....

Most anyone who has received a basic education in world history knows the story of how "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."....

Modern perceptions of Classical Greece are almost invariably based on Athens and Sparta, but there are perhaps few areas as consistently undervalued as the island of Rhodes....

The conqueror from Europe came ashore with thousands of men, ready to set up a new kingdom in England. The Britons had resisted the amphibious invasion from the moment his forces landed, but he was able to push forward. In a large winter battle, the Britons' large army attacked....

Carthage was one of the great ancient civilizations, and at its peak, the Carthaginian empire dominated the Mediterranean against the likes of Greece and Rome....

Among the figures of early Roman history, few stand out quite like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a man who to his contemporaries stood as the very image of the Roman Vir Bous (the Good Man).

Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or established a city as enduring and great as Babylon, they were the people who provided the template of civilization t

Any work about the mercurial Aleister Crowley is better off being labeled a “story” than a “biography” thanks to the impossibility of being sure that anything one reads about him is true....