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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
Susan Ronald · 471 pages
Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Wal
Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond
William Dalrymple, Anita Anand · 335 pages
"The first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, arguably the most celebrated jewel in the world....Using original eyewitness accounts and chronicles never before translated into English, Dalrymple and Anand trace the true history of the diamond and disperse the myths and fantastic tales that have long surrounded this awe-inspiring jewel. The resulting history of south
A History of Britain: The Wars of the British 1603-1776
Simon Schama · 480 pages
'The British Wars' is a compelling chronicle of the changes that transformed every strand and strata of British life, faith and thought from 1603 to 1776. It explores the forces that tore Britain apart during two centuries of dynamic change.
1808: The Flight of the Emperor: How a Weak Prince, a Mad Queen, and the British Navy Tricked Napoleon and Changed the New World
Laurentino Gomes · 321 pages
Incapable of fending off Napoleon, Portugal's Prince Regent Joao ruling since 1799 in the stead of his demented mother bluffed France with promises of surrender while signing a secret agreement with Britain to secure safe passage to Brazil for Joao and his entire court, comprising up to 15,000 people. On November 29, 1807, the fleet set sail from Lisbon, leaving Portugal at the mercy of Napoleon.
The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
John Bagot Glubb · 52 pages
King Leopold's Ghost
Adam Hochschild · 375 pages
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Niall Ferguson · 416 pages
In this book Niall Ferguson argues that the British Empire should be regarded not merely as vanished Victoriana but as the very cradle of modernity. Nearly all the key features of the twenty-first-century world can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth--economic globalization, the communicati
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
William Dalrymple · 560 pages
On a dark evening in November 1862, a cheap coffin is buried in eerie silence. There are no lamentations or panegyrics, for the British Commissioner in charge has insisted, 'No vesting will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Mughals rests.' This Mughal is Bahadur Shah Zafar II, one of the most tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty who found himself leader of a violent and
1421: The Year China Discovered America
Gavin Menzies · 649 pages
This volume presents the author's assertion that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that this same Chinese fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. The author presents a series of vignettes describing his travels around the globe, examining what he claims is evidence for
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
Peter Stark · 368 pages
In 1810, John Jacob Astor sent out two advanced parties to settle the wild, unclaimed western coast of North America. More than half of his men died violent deaths. The others survived starvation, madness, and greed to shape the destiny of a continent. At a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and mil
A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
Robert W. Merry · 576 pages
In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny -- extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive. Robert Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures. - Jacket f
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill
Candice Millard · 381 pages
At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India a
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Stephen Kinzer · 390 pages
The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
Robert Whitaker · 352 pages
The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma
Thant Myint-U · 374 pages
Thant tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family's history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling. His maternal grandfather, U Thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s. And on his father's side, the author is descended from a long line of co
The First Americans: Prehistory-1600 (A History of US, Book One)
Joy Hakim · 177 pages
Presents the history of the Native Americans from earliest times through the arrival of the first Europeans.
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge
Edward Kritzler · 324 pages
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition forced many Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them took to the high seas as freewheeling outlaws. In ships bearing names such as the Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther, and Shield of Abraham, they attacked and plundered the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living i
The Penguin Book of Witches
Katherine Howe · 294 pages
"Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America from a manual for witch hunters written by King James himself in 1597, to court documents from the Salem witch trials of 1692, to newspaper coverage of a woman stoned to death on the streets of Philadelphia while the Continental Congress met, The Penguin Book of Witches is a treasury of historical accounts of ac
Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire
Peter Hopkirk · 439 pages
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
Eric Jay Dolin · 442 pages
In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America
The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
Vijay Prashad · 374 pages
The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
Scott Miller · 422 pages
The era leading up to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 was defined by enormous expansion in American industry and muscle-flexing abroad as well as the potent rise of labor unrest and revolutionary ideas such as anarchy. The growth of railroads, steel output, consumer goods, patents and sheer American ingenuity enriched the captains of industry, while the laborers, assembly-l
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
Jason Stearns · 416 pages