History

History (from Greek ἱστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its usefulness. This includes discu ...more

New Releases Tagged "History"

Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women

Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks

A Woman's Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering

The Dangerous Shore: How a Motley Crew of Scientists, Mobsters, Double Agents, Retirees, Volunteer Pilots (and a Boy Scout) Stopped the Invasion of America

The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control

True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink

No One’s Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There’s Nowhere Else to Turn

You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson's Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode with Her

Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe

Indigenous Citizens: Native Americans' Fight for Sovereignty, 1776-2025

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change

The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya (Unearthing the Past)

A Kingdom and a Village: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow

More new releases tagged "history"...

Giveaways

All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump

Anthony Scaramucci

Release date: Sep 22, 2026

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Format: Print book

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Availability: 75 copies available, 2321 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Mar 26 - Apr 22, 2026

Countries available: U.S.

A Kingdom and a Village: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow

Simon Morrison

Release date: Mar 31, 2026

A deeply learned yet highly readable and entertaining history of Moscow, a city defined by its survival and reinvention, and whose rich history offers A deeply learned yet highly readable and entertaining history of Moscow, a city defined by its survival and reinvention, and whose rich history offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics

The city of Moscow stands at the center of a nation comprising eleven percent of the globe's landmass, 11 time zones and nearly 150 million people, some 13 million of whom live in the capital. In A Kingdom and a Village, acclaimed historian Simon Morrison offers a vividly rendered history of Russia's heart and soul, tracing its transformation from a "big village"--the demeaning nickname the St. Peterburg nobility gave to its provincial neighbor--into a spectacular metropolis of vast geopolitical import.

That arc is the stuff of dramatic, violent, stranger-than-fiction historical narrative: the last century alone has featured invasions and costly battles, the destruction (and reconstruction) of sacred cultural and religious landmarks, and the collapse of the Soviet republic--not to mention the rise of an authoritarian leader who is a keen student of Russian history. Morrison reaches back further still, to the founding of the place we now know as Moscow as a fortress on a river nearly a millennium ago. In the centuries that followed, any number of external forces--from Tatar Mongols and Swedes to Napoleon and Hitler--set their sights on Moscow, reinforcing its self-conception as both a glittering prize and a site of perpetual defense and resurrection.

Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, from the birchbark scrawls that record the oldest layer of Russian civilization to the articles in European newspapers heralding the opening of the magnificent Bolshoi theater, Morrison brings to life the bloody power struggles, cultural marvels, excruciating famines, droughts, storms, and fires that have shaped and re-shaped the city and reinforced its essential character. Having first visited Moscow in 1990 and made some thirty trips since, he excavates the city's truths from its fictions--while celebrating both--in a style that's at once deeply learned and deeply personal.

With A Kingdom and a Village, Morrison makes a persuasive, even impassioned case that to understand Moscow is not only to unlock the spellbinding mysteries of Russia's past but also, critically, to grasp the grim logic of its present. It is a magisterial biography of a place--and an essential guide to a people and a country that, for many readers, might have remained impenetrable. ...more
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Availability: 20 copies available, 2858 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Apr 02 - Apr 22, 2026

Countries available: U.S.