Western Europe

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia....

A riveting story that has been ignored by modern historians, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara will prompt intense interest and discussion as it lays bare attitudes of the Catholic Church....

William Shakespeare's gripping play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation....

The appearance, more than 60 years after the Spanish Civil War ended, of mass graves containing victims of Francisco Franco's death squads finally broke what Spaniards call "the pact of forgetting" - the unwritten understanding that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored....

Though Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on the idea of home....

This is the bella figura, the Italian concept of making every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be, that Kamin Mohammadi discovered when she escaped the London corporate media world for a year in Italy....

In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness....

Award-winning Professor John R. Hale of the University of Louisville is your guide to the fabulous civilizations of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans, and to the natural wonders and idyllic landscapes that surround them....

In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later....

From the New York Times best-selling author of Crusaders and a top authority on the historical events that inspired Game of Thrones comes a vivid, blood-soaked account of one of the most famous rebellions in history....

Tourists, armchair travelers, and historians will all delight in this fluid narrative that can be read straight through, dipped into over time, or used as a reference guide to each period in Sicily's fascinating tale....

There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld....

Welcome to your Irish Gaelic language course. Over the next month across 28 sessions of approximately 20 minutes each you will build a strong understanding of the Irish Gaelic language....

It was an age of hope, accomplishment, and expansion. Europe's High Middle Ages spanned the Crusades, the building of Chartres Cathedral, Dante's Inferno, and Thomas Aquinas. The era seemed to be flowering into a renaissance - until the disastrous 14th century rained catastrophe....

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....

Ranging far from his adopted Provence, Peter Mayle now travels to every corner of France, armed with knife, fork, and corkscrew. He takes us to tiny, out-of-the-way restaurants...

Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome....

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....

Imagine living in Italy for one full year. This was always the dream and promise Ilene and Gary made to each other. This story is an invitation to witness the magic of Italy through the eyes of two new Italian citizens....

The eagerly awaited final volume in Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy. It is the 20th century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler....