This work abandons the conventional distinctions between history and science. Diamond focuses on what ancient people were endowed with in the way of land, animals and plants, and on the confrontations between less and more advanced people to see how this led to today's inequalities.

From the Ice Age to the Cold War, from Reykjavik to the Volga, from Minos to Margaret Thatcher, this book tells the entire story of Europe in a single volume. It was chosen ten times as Book of the Year.

The author of The French , Happiness and A History of French Passions writes about the history of human feelings, habits, emotions and perceptions across time. Zeldin looks at the dilemmas of ordinary life, exploring the intimate experience of men and women through the ages.

Sets out to interpret history of the twentieth century as a long war in which conditions of outright military confrontation or of frantic 'cold' competition lasted from the outbreak of the first world war until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Part of the Penguin Atlas of World History series, which covers events from the French Revolution onwards, this second volume includes events ranging from the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

The classic international bestseller -- a marvellously exciting and stimulating look at the emergence and development of Western civilisation