Renaissance

The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress, of palace intrigue and dramatic politics....

Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family....

This magnificent biography of Henry VIII is set against the cultural, social and political background of his court and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces....

Greenblatt transports listeners to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued a crucial Roman philosophical text from certain oblivion....

A lively and fascinating narrative history about the birth of the modern world....

History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings.

Following the intertwined stories of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary Queen of Scots from girlhood through young adulthood, Young Queens paints a picture of a world in which a woman could wield power at the highest level yet remain at the mercy of the state....

The creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of Rome explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn....

From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages....

The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone....

Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean....

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife....

The Florentines presents a sweeping and magisterial 400-year history of both the city and the people who gave birth to the Renaissance....

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy....

This enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty....

Joining the best sellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, a lively and intriguing tale of two artists whose competitive spirit brought to life one of the world’s most magnificent structures and ignited the Renaissance....

On the heels of her triumphant How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman travels even further back in English history to the era closest to her heart, the dramatic period from the crowning of Henry VII....

In her madcap chronicle, acclaimed popular historian and author Ruth Goodman draws on advice manuals, court cases, and sermons to offer this colorfully crude portrait of offenses most foul in Elizabethan England....

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers....

A beautifully thorough examination into the complicated relationship between Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici, two of the most powerful women in Renaissance Europe who shaped each other as well as the course of history.