Western Europe

When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era—and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation....

Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early '70s - in search of enlightenment, beer, and women...

Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate....

Spanning 1940 to 1965, this volume picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became prime minister - when Britain stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany....

"Sicily," said Goethe, "is the key to everything." It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East....

Did Garibaldi do Italy a disservice when he helped its disparate parts achieve unity? Was the goal of political unification a mistake....

In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France....

Byron and Hitler were equally entranced by Rome's most famous monument, the Colosseum. Mid-Victorians admired the hundreds of varieties of flowers in its crannies and occasionally shuddered at its reputation for contagion, danger, and sexual temptation....

Recalling the classic works by James Herriot and the new British hit Call the Midwife, a nurse’s heartwarming adventures with her family while practicing in rural Scotland....

In 1939, a team of workers beneath the Vatican unearthed an early Christian grave. This surprising discovery launched a secret quest that would last decades a quest to discover the long-lost burial place of the Apostle Peter....

With a brand-new, original introduction from Rick reflecting on his decades of travel, For the Love of Europe features 100 of the best stories published throughout his career. Covering his adventures through Europe, these are stories only Rick Steves could tell....

This second volume in William Manchester's three-volume biography of Winston Churchill challenges the assumption that Churchill's finest hour was as a wartime leader....

A witty exploration of the facts and legends surrounding some of the most popular French foods and wines by a French cheesemonger and an American academic, A Bite-Sized History of France tells the compelling and often surprising story of France from the Roman era to modern times....

A celebration of 25 years of Provençal living - of lessons learned and changes observed - with his final book, Peter Mayle has crafted a lasting love letter to his adopted home, marked by his signature warmth, wit, and humor....

There are a lot of different ways to learn a language—studying books, taking a class, or even watching foreign movies. But I’m an auditory learner. I have to hear and repeat the language to make it stick. And that’s what you’ll experience with this audiobook....

A masterly chronicle of the Battle of Arnhem, which marshaled the greatest armada of troop-carrying aircraft ever assembled and cost the Allies nearly twice as many casualties as D-day....

Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has drawn enthusiastic praise for his books, which are sharply-focused studies as well as glorious celebrations of their subjects....

How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat....

In this unusual and engaging work, Peter Ackroyd brings the listener through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction....

The true story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War....