History World

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps the driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.

Explore How Churchill Went From Schoolboy Failure to Wartime HeroAs a British politician who was well known for serving twice as prime minister for the United Kingdom and as an infamous war organizer, leader Winston S. Churchill filled his long life with achievements and recognition plotted throughout every modern history book. Most famously, he led Great Britain into victory over Nazi Germany during World War II in his first run as prime minister and played an essential role in negotiating peace once the war reached an unsteady end.

Travel thousands of years into our past and discover the significant events that shaped the world as we know it.

Author of an acclaimed history of the Battle of the Atlantic during World War Two (OUP 2016), Jonathan Dimbleby now offers a compelling account of the largest military operation not only of World War Two but of all time–the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany in 1941. Often seen as the turning point of the war in Europe, Operation Barbarossa turned allies into mortal enemies, triggering the atrocities that would characterize the Holocaust.

An unsparing, "sweeping," and "vivid" (Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering) new history of World War II, recasting the conflict as a brutal struggle for survival among declining and ascendant imperial powers

This book promotes a historically and culturally sensitive understanding of trauma during and after World War II. Focusing especially on Eastern and Central Europe, its contributors take a fresh look at the experiences of violence and loss in 1939–45 and their long-term effects in different cultures and societies.