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A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia
Thomas Keneally · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorConquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Roger Crowley · 368 pages
Historian and New York Times bestselling author Crowley presents the epic story of the emergence of Portugal, a small, poor nation that enjoyed a century of maritime supremacy thanks to the daring and navigational skill of its explorers--a tactical advantage no other country could match. Contains primary source material. The epic story of the emergence of Portugal, a small, poor nation that enjo
1776
David McCullough · 393 pages
In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based
Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
Nigel Cliff · 547 pages
A new interpretation of Vasco da Gama's revolutionary voyages, which were seen as a turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam, explores the tragic collision of cultures resulting from his journeys to the Indies.
The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery
Martin Dugard · 294 pages
The Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Charles C. Mann · 631 pages
From the author of 1491 -- the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas -- a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher C
The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence
Martin Meredith · 752 pages
Presents a narrative of the last fifty years of African history, analyzing the factors which account for the political chaos, financial troubles, and civil wars which prevail in many African countries today.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
Peter Hopkirk · 570 pages
An account of the encounter last century between the British in India and Tsarist Russia in Central Asia which became known as the "Great Game". When the encounter began the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2000 apart. By the end, the gap had shrunk in places to 20 miles.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James · 426 pages
En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
Fred Anderson · 880 pages
In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean -- and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role
American Slavery, American Freedom
Edmund S. Morgan · 480 pages
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Mike Davis · 467 pages
The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879
Donald R. Morris · 655 pages
It's brilliant book and one of only a few surrounding the rise & fall of Shaka Zulu
Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire
Andrea Stuart · 353 pages
The author of "The Rose of Martinique" presents a history of the interdependence of sugar, slavery and colonial settlement in the New World through the story of the author's ancestors, exploring the myriad connections between sugar cultivation and her family's identity, genealogy and financial stability.
Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British
Jeremy Paxman · 356 pages
The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. It affects everything, from Prime Ministers' decisions to send troops to war to the adventurers we admire. From the sports we think we're good at to the architecture of our buildings; the way we travel to the way we trade; the hopeless losers we will on, and the
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
Stanley Karnow · 494 pages
This book is an account of America's imperial experience in the Philippines from 1898 to 1946. Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, has now written an enthralling account of an almost forgotten subject: America's imperial experience in the Philippines. Panoramic in scope, profound in its perceptions and compassionate in its human portraits, In Our Image is an exciting, heroic, tragic, col
1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet
David Hill · 392 pages
The Wordy Shipmates
Sarah Vowell · 254 pages
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, their deep-rooted idealism, their political and cultural relevance in today’s world, and their myriad oddities.In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell travels once again through America’s past, this time to seventeenth-century New England. Fro
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
Robert Hughes · 688 pages
Incredibly rich and detailed account of the first white settlers that arrived in Australia, and what they found when they arrived. Riveting.
Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History
Giles Milton · 400 pages
The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
Jill Lepore · 337 pages
Winner of the the 1998 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award of the Phi Beta Kappa Society King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war--colonists against Indians--that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."It all began when Philip (ca
After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
John Darwin · 583 pages
Tamerlane was the last of the "world conquerors". His armies marauded from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of China. Nomad horsemen from the steppes had been the terror of Europe and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405 an epoch of history came to an end. After Tamerlane takes a sweeping new look at our global past. John Darwin's account shows that the ascent of t