Bill Bryson shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet and heads for Europe. He retraces his travels as a student twenty years earlier with caustic hilarity and his own unique brand of humour. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson lived in North Yorkshire for many years. First published in 1991 by Secker & Warburg.

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 International Sensation * In the tradition of THE SECRET HISTORY and THE ALIENIST - a captivating and suspenseful novel that delves into the true history of Count Dracula ...

Europe in 1945 was prostrate and was devastated by war, bombing and chaos. This book tells of Europe's recovery from the devastation, of the decline and fall of Soviet Communism and the rise of the EC and EU, of the end of Europe's empires, and of Europe's relationships with the memory of the war and with the two great powers, Russian and America.

In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This book recounts the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It discusses about the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, and more.

The author spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent. This book offers an account of that journey, full of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the gates of the camp at Birkenau.

Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2009 is the definitive guidebook for an affordable and unforgettable trip to Europe. Covering all the essentials and morefrom packing to transportation to foreign currencyRick's tips allow travelers to become temporary Europeans, saving them time and money along the way. Rick also includes his personal favorites, or back doors, throughout Europe ...

Based on letters Twain wrote from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York as a roving correspondent, this book is a burlesque of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-19th century.

Arguably the greatest biomedical disaster in history, the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out 40 per cent of Europe's population, rocking the foundations of medieval civilisation. The author penetrates a haze of myths to offer the reader a social history, not just of collapse but of rebirth.

Harvard Professor Robert Langton, visiting Paris, is called in when the curator of the Louvre is murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langton and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are amazed to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci - and beyond.

Covering 44 countries, this is a guide to Europe. Including Dedicated Language chapter with key phrases in 29 languages, it offers coverage on Montenegro. It also features a Responsible Travel page with advice on how to travel ethically around the region.

Introduces today's students to the medieval roots of our own society. This work includes coverage of Byzantium and Islam, a revised map program, and an essay program on medieval myths. The author writing about his realization, while in college, says that our world today is a product of the medieval past.

The classic bestselling account of the history of the Third Reich, now repackaged and reissued.

A sequel to A Time of Gifts .

An account of life in Medieval Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Renaissance. Full coverage is given to all aspects of life in a thousand-year period which saw the creation of Western civilization.

The story of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, when for six extraordinary months the city was at the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals and prejudices of the settlement brokers.

The first volume of Hobsbawm's classic and universally acclaimed trilogy on the 19th century, beautifully repackaged as an Abacus History Great

Presenting the history of Europe's brutal century, this book provides an account of a continent locked in a struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.

This narrative tells how Irish monks and scribes saved classical and religious heritage by copying the manuscripts of writers such as Homer and Aristotle, while libraries on the continent were lost forever.