He was world-famous by the time of his death, having being elected to the British Parliament while on hunger strike. In prison, Sands secretly wrote on toilet paper and cigarette papers, writings that were smuggled out of prison. With dry humour they chart in prose and poetry of one man's attempt to preserve his identity while enduring terrible prison conditions. Writings from Prison has become a classic.

    It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cúailnge. The hero of the tale is Cúchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, who resists the invaders single-handed, while Ulster's warriors lie sick.Thomas Kinsella's presents a complete and living version of the story. His translation is based on the partial texts in two medieval manuscripts, with elements from other version, and adds a group of related stories which prepare for the action of the Táin. Illustrated with brush drawings by Louis le Brocquy, this edition provides a combination of medieval epic and modern art.

    Broderick's Catholic family lived in County Tyrone --the heart of rebel country. In That’s That, he brings us into this world and delivers a deeply personal account of what it was like to come of age in the midst of a war that dragged on for over two decades.  We watch as he and his brothers play ball with the neighbor children over a fence for years, but are never allowed to play together because it is forbidden. We see him struggle to understand why young men from his community often just disappear. And we feel his frustration when he is held at gunpoint at various military checkpoints in the North. At the center of his world—and this story—is Colin’s mother. Desperate to protect her children from harm, she has little patience for Colin’s growing need to experience and understand all that is happening around them. Spoken with stern finality, "That's that" became the refrain of Colin's childhood.      The first book to paint a detailed depiction of Northern Ireland's Troubles, That’s That is told in the wry, memorable voice of a man who's finally come to terms with his past.

    But it also tells you why events happen and explains key issues. Its timelines trace events as they happen, from the appearance of the first humans in Africa to first civilisations and then on to recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the space race. It succinctly explains how one event led to another, and sums up topics that include ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Renaissance, World Wars I and II, slavery and empire, and Communist China.Dotted throughout this comprehensive volume are sumptous images that reveal historical world treasures, such as the 16,000-year old cave paintings at Lascaux, Machu Picchu, and the Taj Mahal.With wide coverage of the world's civilisations, events, ideas, and discoveries, World History is both an essential reference and a fascinating read.

    John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

    Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away. Just days after becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror—as well as a skeptical King, a party plotting against him, and an unprepared public. Pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, how could he change the mood and shore up the will of a nervous people? In this gripping day-by-day, often hour-by-hour account of how an often uncertain Churchill turned Britain around, the celebrated Bafta-winning writer Anthony McCarten exposes sides of the great man never seen before. He reveals how he practiced and re-wrote his key speeches, from ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’ to ‘We shall fight on the beaches’; his consideration of a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, and his underappreciated role in the Dunkirk evacuation; and, above all, how 25 days helped make one man an icon. Using new archive material, McCarten reveals the crucial behind-the-scenes moments that changed the course of history. It’s a scarier—and more human—story than has ever been told. “McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable.”—Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of the International Churchill Society

     It begins somewhere in Russia in the mid-19th century, and takes the reader into the events during the two world wars, and their ways of existence during the holocaust. The simple and touching stories are presented from the perspective of a sensitive young boy, fascinated by his surroundings. In a moment of anxiety and fear, the boy is torn from his family, and the journey of his life begins. The story describes four generations that represent the history of Eastern European Jews. The author creates a unique attraction between the book and the reader, by her fluent and vivid language. Historical truths are intertwined with fascinating stories about the power of a violin, and the miracles that occurred during the attempt to survive under impossible conditions in a period where sanity was lost. “People will forget what I said, people will forget what I did, people will never forget what I made them feel.”

    Sentenced to 539 years' imprisonment for IRA crimes including two murders and many terrorist attacks, O'Callaghan served six of those years before being released by royal prerogative.The reason? For the previous sixteen years O'Callaghan had been the most highly placed informer within the ranks of the IRA and had fed the Irish Garda with countless pieces of invaluable information. He prevented the assassination of the Prince and Princess of Wales at a London theatre; he sabotaged operations, explained strategy and caused the arrests of many IRA members. He has done more than any individual to unlock the code of silence which governs the IRA's members, and in effect made it possible to fight the war against the terrorists.The Informer is the story of a courageous life lived under the constant threat of discovery and its fatal consequences. It is the story of a very modern hero, who is not without sin but who has done and is doing everything in his power, and at whatever personal cost, to atone for the past.

    This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

    There are wars and sieges, scandals and seductions, fountains playing in deserted squares and crowds thronging the markets.And there is a dark undertone too, of shadowy corners and dead ends, prisons and punishment.The language and way of thinking of the Venetians sets them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land.'The moon rules Venice,' Ackroyd writes: 'It is built on ocean shells and ocean ground; it has the aspect of infinity.It is the floating world... changing and variable and accidental.'This book, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to thatsensual, surprising realm. We could have no better guide - reading Ackroyd's Venice is, in itself, a glorious journey and the perfect holiday.

    Now, 150 years later, The Famine Ships tells of the courage and determination of those who crossed the Atlantic in leaky, overcrowded sailing ships and made new lives for themselves, among them the child Henry Ford and the twenty-six-year-old Patrick Kennedy, great-grandfather of John F. Kennedy. Edward Laxton conducted five years of research in Ireland and interviewed the emigrants' descents in the U.S. Portraits of people, ships, and towns, as well as facsimile passenger lists and tickets, are among the fascinating memorabilia in The Famine Ships.

    In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, when the continents of Asia, North America, and Africa interacted to create an island archipelago that would later become the Europe we know today. It was on these ancient tropical lands that the first distinctly European organisms evolved. Flannery teaches us about Europe's midwife toad, which has endured since the continent's beginning, while elephants, crocodiles, and giant sharks have come and gone. He explores the monumental changes wrought by the devastating comet strike and shows how rapid atmospheric shifts transformed the European archipelago into a single landmass during the Eocene.As the story moves through millions of years of evolutionary history, Flannery eventually turns to our own species, describing the immense impact humans had on the continent's flora and fauna--within 30,000 years of our arrival in Europe, the woolly rhino, the cave bear, and the giant elk, among others, would disappear completely. The story continues right up to the present, as Flannery describes Europe's leading role in wildlife restoration, and then looks ahead to ponder the continent's future: with advancements in gene editing technology, European scientists are working to recreate some of the continent's lost creatures, such as the great ox of Europe's primeval forests and even the woolly mammoth.Written with Flannery's characteristic combination of elegant prose and scientific expertise, Europe: A Natural History narrates the dramatic natural history and dynamic evolution of one of the most influential places on Earth.

    Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

    Napoleon faced the Archduke Charles, the best of the Habsburg commanders, and a reformed Austrian Army that was arguably the best ever fielded by the Danubian Monarchy. The French ultimately triumphed but the margin of superiority was decreasing and all of Napoleon's skill and determination was required to achieve a victorious outcome. Gill tackles the political background to the war, especially the motivations that prompted Austria to launch an offensive against France while Napoleon and many of his veterans were distracted in Spain. Though surprised by the timing of the Austrian attack on April 10th, the French Emperor completely reversed a dire strategic situation with stunning blows that he called his 'most brilliant and most skillful maneuvers'. Following a breathless pursuit down the Danube valley, Napoleon occupied the palaces of the Habsburgs for the second time in four years. The Austrians recovered, however, and Napoleon suffered his first unequivocal repulse at the Battle of Aspern-Essling on the shores of the Danube opposite Vienna. He would win many battles in his future campaigns, but never again would one of Europe's great powers lie broken at his feet. In this respect 1809 represents a high point of the First Empire as well as a watershed, for Napoleon's armies were declining in quality and he was beginning to display the corrosive flaws that contributed to his downfall five years later.

    So the Foreign Born Irishman, Brendan Behan, takes on his last tour of what he calls "the most exciting city in the world." His anthropological investigations cover a wide variety of places, people and things, always accompanied by ribald anecdote and rumbustious description. Whether he is buying a paper off an old lady in Harlem, swimming in the baths at the Young Men's Hebrew Association, visiting a bum on the Bowery, or having a jar with "one of his own" in an Irish saloon on Third Avenue, he has always an eye for the color of the situation and the wit to express it. Neither the serious nor the absurd are secure from his investigations, and the sacred cows fall happily. From the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village to Costello's on Third Avenue, from Mott Street in Chinatown to the Hotel Chelsea on Twenty-third Street, Brendan Behan traces an erratic path about the city, encountering such luminaries as Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, William O. Douglas and Leonard Lyons - telling a tale here, embroidering an anecdote there and always passing the time of day after his own inimitable fashion. The spirit of the text is brilliantly complemented by Paul Hogarth, whose drawings evoke a nostalgia for the known and not so well-known features of the "melting pot of the world," and continue the partnership which proved to be so successful in Brendan Behan's Island.