History Books Collection April 8, 2025

They were Britain’s Second World War ‘Band of Brothers’, a secret army of fifty handpicked, cross-Channel raiders who carried the fight to the enemy shore long before D-Day. Created after the fall of Dunkirk, they commandeered a Brixham fishing boat and planned clandestine attacks on German warships in the Channel. But not all their enemies wore German uniform.

This book details the lives of the men who fought and died on the beaches of normandy, the banks of the Maas and into Bremen itself. The history of the 1st Battalion South Lancashire Regiment from landing on Sword Beach on D-Day is often overlooked, and this is an attempt to right that wrong. There are numerous stories from the men themselves, gathered together for the first time, as well as a chronological narrative to give context to the immense challenges and sacrifices these men had to make.

Humanity’s earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own. Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.

After the Second World War, divided Germany was saturated with spies. Among them were the ‘first class comrades’ of the Stasi – the East German Ministry for State Security. The early Cold War saw the Stasi establish itself as one of the world’s most notorious spy and secret police agencies.

Colonialism: A Global History interprets colonialism as an unequal relationship characterised by displacement and domination, and reveals the ways in which this relationship has been constitutive of global modernity.

The Holy Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter H. Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states.

The riveting story of a dramatic confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a compelling conflict that unfolded in the newly created Washington Territory from 1853 to 1857. When appointed Washington’s first governor, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, an ambitious military man turned politician, had one goal: to persuade (peacefully if possible) the Indians of the Puget Sound region to turn over their ancestral lands to the federal government.

The idea of modern terrorism and the practice of terrorist violence emerged in Britain’s first colony, Ireland, before spreading through imperial networks to South and East Asia, to Africa, and to the Middle East. Thus, empire not only birthed terror, but also made it global. And the sheer spread, diversity, and longevity of that empire produced multiple stages in the evolution of terrorism from rural intimidation to urban guerilla warfare to homegrown radicalism.

The Field Marshal’s Revenge is an enthralling and insightful account of the special relationship between two countries – and two men – during the dramatic final chapters of the Second World War. Charles Whiting shines the spotlight on Monty and Ike, two charismatic and inspirational commanders who were often ill at ease with each other on both a personal and professional level.

An intimate history of America’s first publicly funded artists’ housing project and its residents that casts light on the precarious place of art-makers in a changing New York. Westbeth Artists Housing was founded in 1970 to provide affordable housing for artists and their families. It occupies a full city block in what back then was one of New York’s less desirable neighborhoods, the desolate far-West Village.

The authoritative cultural history of Virginia’s most famous accused witch In 1706, Grace Sherwood was “ducked” after her neighbors in Princess Anne County accused her of witchcraft. Binding and throwing her into the Lynnhaven River, they waited to see whether she would float to the top (evidence of her guilt) or sink (proof of her innocence). Incredibly, she survived. This bizarre spectacle became an early piece of Virginia folklore as stories about Sherwood, the “Witch of Pungo,” spread. Her legend still looms large in Tidewater.

A study of Indian indentured labor in Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad that explores the history of indenture’s normalization. In this book, historian Jonathan Connolly traces the normalization of indenture from its controversial beginnings to its widespread adoption across the British Empire during the nineteenth century.