History

Barbara Millicent Roberts was born in 1959. Her image is instantly recognizable almost anywhere in the world. She has held hundreds of jobs across the last six decades, from teen model to astronaut to movie star. She’s been adored, criticized, mocked, reinvented, memed, protested, and celebrated—sometimes all at once. Who is this remarkable woman? Well, you might know her better by her nickname: Barbie.

211 BC: Hannibal's struggle against the Romans in Italy continues, but the Carthaginians have been utterly defeated on Sicily. Fleeing the island to Spain, Hanno and Aurelia are shipwrecked, and taken prisoner by local tribesmen. Unless they escape, a life of slavery and brutal treatment awaits...

Michael Bergin's account of the years he and Carolyn Bessette shared—revisiting the years dramatized in FX's Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette Would she be alive today? Would we be together? Would we have been happy? Before she was Mrs. John F. Kennedy Jr. — before the...

Globally famous and yet universally misunderstood – these are the complex and utterly engrossing stories of Britain's royal women behind the public façade. Saints or sinners? Perfect princesses or difficult duchesses? Monarchy’s saviours or its destroyers? They rank among the world’s most...

Working her way up from gruelling bootcamp training to leading a drug interdiction operation seizing €700 million of cocaine from a yacht off the Kerry coast, she was a leader among men and rose to every challenge. Developing a love of the sea, Gleeson learned that to be at one with it required agility, and a willingness to change, to go with the wind – not against it. These lessons prepared her for operating without a life raft when her personal life threw her the greatest challenge of all.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Number 1 Bestseller Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many, many young women who travelled on their own, hoping for a better life. Some lived...

Bloomsbury presents 1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory by Richard Hargreaves, read by Charles Armstrong A unique history of the Axis powers attempt to win the Second World War in 1942, told through the eyes of those who were there. Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian...

In early June 1967, Marine Corps recruits from Minneapolis-St. Paul and outlying Minnesota received a letter stating all those scheduled for active duty in June would go as one platoon on June 28, 1967. One hundred fifty Marine applicants would be shipped to San Diego, California, to the recruit training depot. The Minnesota Twins baseball team was sponsoring the unit. They were sworn in on television at a pregame ceremony and were guests of the Twins at the game.

Bloomsbury presents The Wise and Their Works: The Legacy of the Great Exhibition of 1851, written and read by A. N. Wilson The Wise and Their Works celebrates the 175th anniversary of the Great Exhibition in 2026. The men who inspired the Great Exhibition of 1851 - Henry Cole, Sir Robert Peel...

An authoritative biography of Offa of Mercia, revealing his importance as the king who stood at the turning point of Anglo-Saxon history Offa ruled the Mercian heartland of the west midlands from 757 to 796. But while Alfred the Great and his dynasty are seen as agents of a new beginning that...

The year opened with the Axis powers inflicting a series of disasters on the newly formed Allies: Pearl Harbor, followed by Japan's conquest of the Philippines and Southeast Asia; Rommel running unchecked in North Africa; devastating defeats of the Red Army at Kharkov, Crimea, and southern...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Written nearly two millennia ago between 161 and 180 AD, Meditations is the most famous and influential work of Stoic philosophy ever produced. It was never intended for publication; instead, it is a compilation of the private, personal journals of...

Can't afford housing or healthcare? One 1886 Supreme Court fraud gave corporations constitutional rights over you—discover how billionaire oligarchs stole your future and the constitutional amendment to take it back. You work harder than your parents did, yet you can't afford a home...

A vibrant, colorful, and authoritative exploration of the world's first and most illustrious metropolis. 'Babylon' is a name that has a double life: it denotes the great ancient Mesopotamian city with a long and complex history, and it is also a fictive allusion with a wide variety of...

A true pivotal moment in American history, the Louisiana Purchase redefined the boundaries of the United States and recharted the course of its history. The story behind it transcends borders.

In 1985 John Corcoran, a garda informer within the ranks of the Cork IRA, was abducted and brutally executed by the IRA. No one has ever been charged with his murder, but for decades, speculation was rife that gardaí of the highest rank allowed Corcoran – a father of eight – to be murdered...

“Perlstein...aims here at nothing less than weaving a tapestry of social upheaval. His success is dazzling.” —Los Angeles Times “Both brilliant and fun, a consuming journey back into the making of modern politics.” —Jon Meacham “Nixonland is a grand historical epic. Rick Perlstein...

The Didache, also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is one of the earliest and most important Christian texts outside the New Testament. Brief, practical, and direct, it gives instruction on the Two Ways of life and death, baptism, fasting, prayer, the Eucharist, hospitality, church order, and watchfulness for the coming of the Lord. The work offers a rare glimpse into the beliefs, worship, discipline, and moral teaching of the early Christian communities.

A "Best Non-Fiction to Read This Year" Selection from The New Statesman A magisterial, revisionist narrative history of the Soviet Union in its post-Stalin heyday, bringing a forgotten society to vivid life and offering a new explanation for how it suddenly collapsed. To those of us in the West...

'A groundbreaking reclamation of the forgotten women who slay dragons. A must-read for dragon fans.' Professor Daniel Ogden A seminal chronicle of the hidden history and mythology of female dragon slayers from ancient world expert and author of Goddess with a Thousand Faces Jasmine Elmer. The...

Bloomsbury presents Prey by Graham Hurley, read by Andrew Cullum. A breathtaking thriller combining espionage and combat, Prey is the story of the brutal battle for the skies during the darkest days of World War II. 1943. The war is turning against the Third Reich, but the Luftwaffe are eagerly...

The Art of War—is a timeless manual on strategy and leadership, first translated into English by Lionel Giles in 1910. Written by Sun Tzu in ancient China, it teaches that victory depends on preparation, discipline, and wisdom rather than brute force. The text emphasizes knowing yourself and your enemy, adapting to changing circumstances, conserving resources, and winning without unnecessary conflict. Though originally a military treatise, its lessons apply to business, politics, sports, and personal decision making.

In The Missing Key, Matthew LaCroix uncovers that code and reconstructs the blueprint it points to—a revelation that challenges conventional timelines and transforms what we think we know about human origins. The culmination of more than a decade of research and two years of field investigation, this work follows the author from the archives of the Penn Museum to the ancient sites of Türkiye, Cambodia, South America, and Egypt, where the final pieces came together on the Giza Plateau.

An immersive history of our coasts and the people who have shaped them The coast means something different to everyone. It’s a place of pleasure and reckless pursuits, of fishing, fearless endeavours and a crashing, rugged beauty. The coast is, and always has been, our first line of defence...

"A tale of violence and political intrigue that reads like a Tom Clancy novel written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky." —The Wall Street Journal "Riveting . . . It's a vital window onto the weird world of secretive, privatized modern warfare." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) An eye-opening...