Modern

Brought to you by Penguin. No sex. No kids. No future? When Tom Feiling moved to Tokyo as a student in the early nineties, Japan was a beacon of the future: a rising superpower, a technology giant, and a global symbol of prosperity, civility and success. When he returned twenty-four years later...

It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war’s death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War’s prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization.

The history of modern China has long been portrayed as a tale of Communists fighting in the hills for freedom, gradually gaining popular support by taking land from the rich and giving it to the poor. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Red Dawn Over China reveals how unlikely the Party's victory actually was, had it not been for financial and military support from the Soviet Union.

In the decade following the end of the Cold War, Western democracies stood victorious, brimming with optimism and grand designs. Today, the 1990s look less like a great triumph for liberal democracy and Western modernity than a decade in which post-Cold War excitement and anticipation obscured a...

Nazi Germany didn’t start with tanks, camps, or war. It began with political chaos, inflation, and a nation hunting “enemies within.” Hitler was voted in, welcomed, and normalized long before dictatorship was obvious. He promised to make Germany “great” again. If you’ve ever wondered why millions backed Hitler, why people watched Jewish neighbors disappear and stayed silent, why propaganda and strongman politics keep returning, or how a democracy can die quietly through fear, division, and a leader promising to fix everything, this audiobook tells the story clearly from start to finish.

Over the last few decades, our understanding of slavery has been transformed by the work of many talented scholars. We have learned a great deal about the actions of enslavers, the struggles and victories of the enslaved, and how the aftertimes of American slavery persist into the present. Yet Dan Rood’s In the Shadow of the Great House is one of the first contemporary audiobooks to focus on the primary engine of slavery, race, and capitalism in this country: the plantation.

Helmuth James von Moltke, am 11. März 1907 auf dem Familiengut im schlesischen Kreisau geboren, war einer der wenigen, die diese Eigenschaften mit sich brachten. Anders als die meisten Mitglieder der bürgerlich-konservativen und der militärischen Opposition gegen Hitler war er ein kompromissloser Gegner des Nationalsozialismus von allem Anfang an. Und er war der Spiritus Rector des Kreisauer Kreises, jener Widerstandsgruppe, die sich wie keine zweite in einem jahrelangen mühevollen Diskussionsprozess auf ein detailliertes Programm für eine Neuordnung nach Hitler verständigte.

Das »Dritte Reich« ist gefallen–doch die Geschichte steht nicht still. In Flensburg kreuzen sich die Wege von Agenten, Überlebenden und alten Eliten. Zwischen zerfallender Macht und zaghaftem Aufbruch wird verhandelt, getäuscht, geschwiegen–und der Grundstein für erstaunliche Karrieren gelegt. Dies ist die spannende Geschichte einer Zwischenzeit, in der die Konturen der heutigen Welt bereits erkennbar sind.

Zanim powstała Lista Schindlera, był człowiek, który przez 46 lat walczył, by świat usłyszał prawdę. Leopold „Poldek” Page—ocalały z Holokaustu—nie pozwolił zapomnieć o odwadze, która ocaliła życie 1300 Żydów. To opowieść o spotkaniu, które zmieniło bieg historii. O cichym bohaterze, który przekazał dalej największe świadectwo XX wieku.

An astonishing account of life under a murderous regime amid a great city’s descent into utter annihilation In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war...

From the trenches of World War I to the battlefields of modern Ukraine, discover the untold stories of courage that changed the face of warfare forever. Throughout history, women have answered the call to defend freedom, often in the shadows of official recognition. "Women at War" brings these extraordinary stories to light, revealing how female warriors, medics, spies, and leaders have shaped military history across more than a century of conflict.

From the award-winning author of American Sirens and A Thousand Naked Strangers comes a real-life thriller about the most daring rescue in air-medical history. JULY 2014. Two American medical volunteers who joined the fight against the deadliest Ebola outbreak in world history have gotten...

"My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery," declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the most radical nation‑state during the Age of Revolution and the first country ever to permanently outlaw slavery. Enslaved for the first thirty years of his life, Dessalines (c. 1758-1806) joined the revolution that abolished slavery within the French colony. Then he became a general in the colonial army of the new French Republic. When it was discovered that France once again supported slavery, Dessalines declared war on his former allies.

In the aftermath of Louis XIV's death, France teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The nation's coffers were empty, its credit destroyed, and its future uncertain. Into this desperate situation stepped an extraordinary figure: John Law—mathematician, gambler, financial theorist, and perhaps the most audacious economic visionary in history.

The American War on Election Corruption is an investigative exposé revealing the battle to uncover and dismantle systemic fraud threatening the integrity of US elections.

Throughout the seventeenth century, medical lecturers demonstrated human anatomy by dissecting a cadaver while surrounded by students. After the Revolutionary War, though, instructors realized that they needed many more cadavers to serve a growing number of medical students. Enter the “resurrectionists”–body snatchers. Resurrectionists were a cruel lot; men (almost always men and often medical students themselves) who would sneak into a cemetery under the cover of darkness, remove a body, and then sell it to a physician or anatomist–usually for around $100.

Step aboard a wind-powered voyage through history—into the heart of one of the most influential, complex, and far-reaching colonial empires ever built. In The History of the Dutch Empire, discover how a small republic forged a global legacy through trade, naval dominance, and strategic colonial control. From the bustling canals of Amsterdam to the shores of Java, the plantations of Suriname, and the brief Dutch foothold in the Americas, this audiobook unpacks the intricate web of commerce, conquest, and governance that defined Dutch expansion.

In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city’s historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armored far-right...

Vladka Meed, born Feigele Peltel, was just a teenager when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Increasingly devastated by the deportation and murder of 300,000 Jews—including her mother, brother, and sister—who were sent from Warsaw to the death camp of Treblinka, she heeded the call for armed resistance, joining the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), established in Warsaw in July 1942.

A LitHub and Parade Most Anticipated Book of the Year For fans of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson, the gripping story of the assassination of Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the deadly game of cat and mouse that preceded it On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky invited a man he knew only as...