When They Go Low, We Go High. Speeches that shape the world – and why we need them

Shortlisted for the Wolfson history prize, the Pushkin House russian book prize and the Longman history today prize 2017 the times, BBC history and tls books of the year 2016 'masterful, gripping ...filled with astonishing, vivid and heartbreaking stories of crime and punishment, of redemption, love and terrifying violence. It has an amazing cast of despots, murderers, whores and heroes. It's a wonderful read' Simon Sebag Montefiore It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof'. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Russian Revolution, the tsarist regime exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia. The House of the Dead, brings to life both the brutal realities of an inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. This is the vividly told history of common criminals and political radicals, the victims of serfdom and village politics, the wives and children who followed husbands and fathers, and of fugitives and bounty-hunters. The tsars looked on Siberia as creating the ultimate political quarantine from the contagions of revolution. Generations of rebels - republicans, nationalists and socialists - were condemned to oblivion thousands of kilometres from European Russia. Over the nineteenth century, however, these political exiles transformed Siberia's mines, prisons and remote settlements into an enormous laboratory of revolution. This masterly work of original research taps a mass of almost unknown primary evidence held in Russian and Siberian archives to tell the epic story both of Russia's struggle to govern its monstrous penal colony and Siberia's ultimate, decisive impact on the political forces of the modern world. 'An absolutely fascinating book, rich in fact and anecdote.' - David Aaronovitch 'A splendid example of academic scholarship for a public audience. Yet even though he is an impressively calm and sober narrator, the injustices and atrocities pile up on every page.' - Dominic Sandbrook 'A superb, colourful history of Siberian exile under the tsars' - The Times

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was an English writer best known for his detective stories about Sherlock Holmes. This volume is a great historical work that contains author's personal experiences in the second Anglo-Boer War as a military doctor. According to the author himself, he did everything he could to give a clear description of the events.

With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I. In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. She shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered; and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test. Laura Spinney demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant - if not more so - as two world wars in shaping the modern world; in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts.

Ireland in its own words: a dazzling compendium Over the past hundred years, Ireland has undergone profound political, social and cultural changes. But one thing that has not changed is the Irish genius for observation and storytelling, invective and self-scrutiny. Ireland: The Autobiography draws upon this genius to create a portrait of a century of Irish life through the words of the people who lived it. Broadcaster and historian John Bowman has mined archives, diaries and memoirs to create a remarkably varied and delightfully readable mosaic of voices and perspectives. Ireland: The Autobiography is a brilliantly selected, wide-ranging and engrossing take on the last century of Irish life. It gives us a portrait of Ireland unlike anything we've read before. 'Absorbing and illuminating ...John Bowman has selected a range of accounts of Irish life that do justice to what happened, what it felt like, and the personal and societal experiences alongside the "official" version.' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times 'A treasure' Irish Examiner 'A whistle-stop tour of the seismic, seminal and explosive events which shaped the nation as we know it' Irish Independent 'Entertaining and informative' Sunday Business Post 'A remarkably varied and delightfully readable mosaic of voices and perspectives' Women's Way 'A thoughtful and eclectic collection' Irish Mail on Sunday

To many, the word 'Viking' invites visions of violence. But plunder, rape and pillage do not tell the full story. In this fresh narrative history, Thomas Williams, a curator of the British Museum exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend, reframes the story of the Vikings. Weaving new academic research with an exploration of the physical remains and landscapes that the Vikings fashioned and walked, this book offers a vital evocation of a forgotten world, its influence on British language, literature, place names and folklore, its echoes in later history and its implications for the present.