Global History

Understand the greatest books in economics with the latest volume in the best-selling 50 Classics series. From Karl Marx to Naomi Klein, from The Wealth of Nations to Piketty's Capital, here are the 50 most important titles on finance and world economy distilled. 50 Economics Classics considers the legacy of some of the great names including Ricardo, Keynes, Malthus and Friedman and highlights the work of newer writers including Piketty, Luigi Zingales and Enrico Moretti.

What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From the global best-selling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of looking at the world. Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks-leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

REAL POWER IS THAT WHICH IS EXERCISED BEHIND THE SCENES AND BEYOND SCRUTINY. The last decade of the millennium. Communism is gone, only to be replaced by the tyranny of a new breed of robber barons. An assassin’s bullet leaves Temple, former American president, unable to communicate. Lilah, Temple’s chosen ruler for the oil empire he built, is accused of treason and is in hiding from every dictator she ever rubbed the wrong way, every terrorist group she outmaneuvered. The clout of the Kingsleys now extends throughout the world. No matter who occupies the White House, Godwin Kingsley ...

The Bible is the world's best-known text. Yet, it is a book that never was - its original form does not exist and likely never did. What we have is the inheritance of generation after generation of Christians who have sought to hear God speak. Available in over 3,000 languages and taking innumerable forms, each version is a revelation, evolving as a reflection of its own culture and moment.

For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes—soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic—developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century.

In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories - illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional - and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist.

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the “rise of the West” is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World and upon the maturing field of environmental history, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles, including their impacts on the environment.

Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change.

Born from necessity, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has always seemed on the verge of collapse. At this moment of incipient strategic crisis, Timothy A. Sayle offers a sweeping history of the most critical alliance in the post-World War II era. In Enduring Alliance, Sayle recounts how the Western European powers, along with the United States and Canada, developed a treaty to prevent encroachments by the Soviet Union and to serve as a first defense in any future military conflict.

We may think of "globalism" as a recent development but its origins date back to the fifteenth century and beyond, when seafarers pioneered routes across the oceans with the objectives of exploration, trade, and profit. These voyages only became possible after certain technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping—enabled navigation across unprecedented distances.

Hailed as the 'first freedom', free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech's many defenders, Mchangama demonstrates how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected the WTO rules and procedures would liberalize China and make it "a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order". But the experts made the wrong bet. China today is liberalizing neither economically nor politically but, if anything, becoming more authoritarian and mercantilist. In this book, renowned globalization and Asia expert Clyde Prestowitz describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them.

Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate. In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

In 1920, at the age of eight, Moisye Kaptzan spent months hiding in squalid pigsties and opium dens after Bolsheviks murdered his father and hunted his surviving family members. Three years later, when the Great Yokohama earthquake flattened that city, Moisye was buried under rubble. Trapped in Shanghai as a young man during WWII, he outwitted Japanese occupiers while assisting Jewish refugees running from Hitler. Undaunted by disasters, Moisye Kaptzan relied on his keen understanding of human nature and fluency in multiple languages to thrive throughout these tumultuous times.

A gripping spy memoir that unravels a world of power, corruption, and high-stakes diplomacy. Set against the backdrop of the Vatican, the Kremlin, and a master chess player with a hidden agenda, this riveting narrative explores the intersection of centuries-old conflicts and modern-day geopolitics. As the story weaves through diplomatic maneuvers and oil pipeline rivalries—from Africa and the Middle East to Xinjiang, China—it exposes the dark underbelly of international lobbying in Washington and London. At the heart of this saga is a retired ambassador, who is now working for one of ...

Blood Shadows in Madrid A haunting mystery of betrayal, obsession, and the dark secrets that linger in Madrid’s shadowy corners When Diego Doria, a troubled detective from Málaga, receives a desperate call from his estranged girlfriend, Macarena, he can’t ignore it. She’s being hunted by figures from her past—women who claim to be Tlahuelpuchi, vampiresses from Mexican folklore. Driven by a mix of loyalty and unresolved feelings, Diego heads to Madrid, where the city’s glittering streets hide shadows deeper than he imagined. Madrid becomes a character in its own right: from the ...

"Great Wall to Global Power: A History of China" offers readers an expansive and engrossing journey through the rich tapestry of Chinese history, from the ancient foundations of its first dynastic rule to its contemporary status as a burgeoning global powerhouse. This meticulously researched book serves as a profound exploration of the multifaceted developments that have shaped China over millennia, presenting a narrative that is as detailed as it is captivating. As you turn the pages of this comprehensive volume, you will be transported through time, beginning with the construction of the ...