Geschiedenis

‘5 mei 1945’ van Wim Huijser, Coen Pepplinkhuizen en Jelle de Gruyter is een reconstructie van de Duitse capitulatie die leidde tot de bevrijding van Nederland.

Was de breuk tussen Nederland en België wel zo onvermijdelijk?

In ‘Sparta’ brengt historicus Andrew Bayliss de Spartaanse samenleving erg dichtbij.

"He is FAKE NEWS, a total LOSER, and no one should waste their time or money in buying this boring and obviously fictitious book!" Donald Trump, President of the United States

"Gripping-a veritable harvest of slime, sycophancy and sleaze that tells the story of Trump 2.0, an aggrieved pugilist waging a 'life or death' campaign." New York Times

"Michael Wolff... the shrewdest and most colourful chronicler of the Trump years," Sunday Times

All or Nothing is the final chapter in Wolff's Fire and Fury series. With extraordinary behind-the-scenes access, it follows every turn of Donald Trump's third presidential campaign.

In disgrace after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and sent into exile, Trump immediately sputters back to life. To the shock of the Republican Party leadership, the Trump base has not abandoned him. Hardly a year on, he is as strong as any challenger has ever been. The American establishment is stunned by his comeback and determined to stop it and hold him accountable for his abuses of law and power. Equally, he has vowed retribution on anyone who tries to stand in his way. The 2024 presidential race is elemental: the system breaks Donald Trump or Donald Trump breaks the system.

Michael Wolff tells this story from inside the Trump campaign. Through the sources he has cultivated over his ten years of writing about Donald Trump, including people who are with Trump on a daily basis, as well as his own first-hand reporting, we get a nearly moment-by-moment picture of the pendulum mood swings, the casual cruelties, the demands for obeisance, the preternatural resolve or otherworldly levels of denial, and the certain flashes of showman genius of the new president.

Praise for Fire and Fury, Siege and Landslide

"A book to shake America to its foundations" TheGuardian
"Cruel, unforgiving, muckracking, scandalous. I couldn't stop reading it." The Telegraph

"Hilarious and frightening, and often reads like a Hollywood gossip column" Financial Times

"Smart, vivid and intrepid," The New York Times

Twan Geurts gaat op zoek naar het levensverhaal van Arvo Pärt, de wereldberoemde componist. Waarom bewegen zijn ogenschijnlijk eenvoudige composities zoveel mensen tot tranen?

This is the story of the fall of an Empire – and the rise of another.

Who spread Christianity, how, and why? In her quest to find the answer, Professor Alice Roberts takes us on a gripping investigative journey. From a secluded valley in south Wales to the shores of Brittany; from the heart of the Roman Empire in a time of political turmoil to the ancient city of Corinth in the footsteps of the apostle Paul; from Alexandria in the fourth century to Constantinople.

As the Roman Empire crumbled in Western Europe, a shadow of power remained, almost perfectly mapping onto its disappearing territories. And then, it continued to spread. Unearthing the archaeological clues and challenging long-established histories, Professor Roberts tells a remarkable story about the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christianity.

Lifting the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight, this story is nothing short of astonishing.

Domination is a page-turning exploration of power and its survival.

THE MUST-READ BOOK ON THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FLASHPOINT

'Magnificent ... As exciting to read as it is important' Peter Frankopan

'Fascinating ... essential reading' Helen Thompson

'Alarming and uplifting' John Kampfner

The Baltic will decide the course of the West in the coming years.

These nine borderlands are not only the historical battleground of Russian aggression; they are also a factory of ideas for how to revive Europe. Shaped by the past one hundred years, each Baltic country offers lessons in adaptability, hope and prosperity in an era of instability.

Innovation in Estonia, patience in Finland, resilience in Poland, even poetry in Latvia: with their tumultuous pasts and exposed geography, these poorly understood frontline states are reconfiguring the balance of power around the heart of Eurasia. From pioneering environmental initiatives and world-leading innovations in technology to ever-growing economies, from tackling disinformation to tempering the populist right, the Baltic states are now key to understanding how political events might unfold in the coming years.

Blending history, politics and reportage, this is the first book to explain why these are some of our most imaginative allies, yet most of us know so little about them. Interviewing prime ministers, presidents, generals, intelligence officers, business leaders and ordinary people, Oliver Moody traces the extraordinary emergence of a new fulcrum of great-power rivalry. But the real reason we need to understand them is that their fate is ours.

Standaardwerk over de revolutie in de Lage Landen, nu in een nieuw jasje

In het boek De heimelijke roof toont JanGeert van der Post hoe de VS in 1903 Panama van Colombia losweekten via diplomatie, geld en macht.

Engelen fileert politieke oorlogsretoriek en legt bloot hoe angst, militarisering en NAVO-consensus het debat vervormen. Een scherpe gids om helder te blijven denken in een verharde geopolitieke tijd.

De autobiografie van de moeder van de dekolonisatie. Over panafrikanisme, revolutionaire diplomatie, kameraadschap, verraad, maar ook over de rol van vrouwen in de strijd.

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NONFICTION CROWN AWARD 'Gripping … remarkably wide-ranging' THE TIMES This is an immersive and revelatory history of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last ship of the Atlantic slave trade, whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways. The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860 – more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history. In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. Survivors follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile – an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston – to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend – a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous. An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography and social commentary, Survivors is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and its far-reaching influence on life today.

NOMINATED FOR THE 2026 MILITARY HISTORY BOOK AWARDSNo campaign during World War Two contained more spinetingling drama, outstanding courage and heartbreaking tragedy than the Arctic convoys. Yet they - and the multifaceted Battle of the Arctic that had to be fought to get them through to Russia - remain one of the war's most undercelebrated feats.As this book's title implies, Battle of the Arctic tells a unique story. For much of the conflict was complicated by terrific storms, snow, ice, fog, whales and Arctic mirages, so that what is chronicled at times sounds like a cross between the nightmarish torment experienced by both Shackleton in his ship Endurance and Scott of the Antarctic, and an Arctic version of Robinson Crusoe.The action unfolded as Allied naval and merchant seamen, airmen, submariners, soldiers and intelligence officers delivered on their countries' promise to take arms to Russia notwithstanding the German attempts to hunt them in their aircraft, U-boats and surface fleet spearheaded by Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. When ships were attacked, and went down in seas so cold that a man could die after five minutes of immersion, it triggered events reminiscent of the do-or-die moments during the sinking of the Titanic. Men perished one by one in lifeboats, and as castaways on deserted Arctic islands where they were stalked by polar bears. Frostbitten and wounded survivors ended up in primitive Russian hospitals where amputations were carried out without anesthetics. Others, while stranded for months in the communist state they were aiding, experienced the murky worlds of the NKVD, and the gulag, as well as famine and prostitution.Using new material unearthed in American, British, Russian and German archives, as well as Polish, Norwegian, French and Dutch sources, and a remarkable collection of vivid witness accounts brought together at the passing of the last survivors, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore can at last shine a revealing light on this extraordinary tale that oscillates between the sailors' eye view on the front line, and the controversies that infuriated world leaders.

Deaths and disappearances pile up as a mysterious beast stalks the French countryside and two girls seize an unlikely opportunity that just might save them all—or serve them up on a platter.

Step into this chilling, historical horror inspired by the unsolved mystery of the Beast of Gévaudan.

When a series of brutal, mysterious deaths start plaguing the countryside and whispers of a beast in the mountains reach the quiet French hamlet of Mende, most people believe it’s a curse—God’s punishment for their sins.

But to sixteen-year-old Joséphine and her best friend, Clara, the beast isn’t a curse. It’s an opportunity.

For years, the girls of Mende have been living in a nightmare—fathers who drink, brothers who punch, homes that feel like prisons—and this is a chance to get them out.

Using the creature’s attacks as cover, Joséphine and Clara set out to fake their friends’ deaths and hide them away until it’s safe to run. But escape is harder than they thought. If they can’t brave a harsh winter with little food… If the villagers discover what they’re doing… If the beast finds them first...

Those fake deaths might just become real ones.

A human history of one of the planet’s most iconic lakes, and the civilizations that surrounded its shores The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and Mamluks. Today it has become a tourist hotspot, but its drying basin is increasingly under threat. In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake’s human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.

In ‘China en Rusland’ verhalen historici Sören Urbansky en Martin Wagner de vier eeuwen aan gedeelde geschiedenis van deze twee grootmachten.

A TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union begins its countdown. From the steppes of Kazakhstan, the first human - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin - launches into space.

In that moment, another countdown begins. How could it be that a single generation - just three decades - would separate the USSR's crowning achievement from the collapse of the Soviet empire?

More than a history lesson, The Dark Side of the Earth is a testament to the enduring fight for truth and freedom. In pursuit of the real story, renowned Kremlin opponent Mikhail Zygar ('one of Russia's smartest and best-sourced young journalists' - New York Times) gathered witness statements of jaw-dropping candour from hundreds of key players: the last first secretaries and first presidents of the post-Soviet republics, the leaders of independence movements, Western politicians and diplomats, and Mikhail Gorbachev himself, not to mention dozens of scientists, authors, film directors, aspiring rockstars and ordinary men and women who for a time became the accidental protagonists of history.

The end of the USSR set the stage for today's vengeful return. But as Gagarin looked down from the stars at his home world, was Russia's fate already written?

Russia is intent on attacking beyond Ukraine. Can Europe defend itself?

While Ukraine holds back Russia’s onslaught, Moscow has been working hard at rebuilding its army for the next invasion. But for the past 30 years, Britain and Europe have been running down their armed forces and defence industries, thinking that war would never come. Most of the continent banked an increasingly illusory ‘peace dividend’ while outsourcing defence to the United States.

Now, change in the US and clear intent from the Kremlin have set Europe scrambling to rebuild its defences. But will it be enough, and can it be in time?

In this urgent, vital book, Keir Giles lays out the stark choices facing leaders and societies as they confront the return of war in Europe. If the freedom and prosperity that the continent takes for granted are to be preserved, the sacrifices required will affect everyone, without exception. Above all, Giles calls for new leadership in defence of Europe as the US steps aside—and warns that the UK’s brief opportunity to set the pace has already been squandered.

A journey through the great mass-extinction events that have shaped our Earth: 'Deeply informed and readable' Nature In this vast sweep of our Earth’s history, Michael Benton brings the deep past to life as never before. Deploying the cutting-edge tools in biology, chemistry, physics and geology that are transforming our understanding of previous environmental cataclysms – including the incredible new discovery of a hitherto unknown extinction event – he uncovers not only their lethal effects but also the processes that brought about such large-scale destruction. Beginning with the oldest extinction, Benton investigates the Late Ordovician, which set the evolution of the first animals on an entirely new course; the late Devonian, brought on by global warming; the cataclysmic End-Permian, which wiped out over 90 per cent of all life on Earth; and, book-ending the age of the dinosaurs, the newly discovered Carnian Pluvial Event and the End-Cretaceous asteroid. He examines how global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes and meteorite impact have affected conditions on Earth, the drastic consequences for global ecology, and how life in turn survived, adapted and evolved. This expert retelling of scientific breakthroughs allows us to link long-ago upheavals to our modern crises. As today’s climate scientists and political leaders grapple to understand these processes and our planet enters the sixth great extinction, these insights from the past may hold the key to survival.

Een onthullend portret van een van de meest aansprekende en verguisde politici van Nederland. Ontdek meer over Femke Halsema, haar burgemeesterschap en de successen en uitdagingen die daarbij horen.

A global history of the world's best-known and most influential book.

Met een bijzonder levendige blik neemt Edgar Morin ons mee op de grote reis van de mensheid door de tijd, van de oudheid tot heden, in ‘Het onwaarschijnlijke kan gebeuren’.

From a world-leading AI researcher, the history of artificial intelligence told through the six key ways it functions

This reading journal is for those who reach for the classics, want all things literary and need somewhere to collect their thoughts about all the books they love, hate, TBR, or DNF. Catering to the Booktok and Bookstagram communities and equally appealing to everyday readers and book club members, it features a fun, meme-able cover and an easy-to-use and compact format.

This reading journal is for those passionate about the heroes and heroines of their books and need somewhere to collect their thoughts about all the books they love, hate, TBR, or DNF. Catering to the Booktok and Bookstagram communities and equally appealing to everyday readers and book club members, it features a fun, meme-able cover and an easy-to-use and compact format.

Een verbijsterend verhaal over slavernij, hebzucht, moord en het ontstaan van het abolitionisme

In 1600 English helmsman William Adams washed ashore in Japan and was interrogated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s most powerful warlord and soon-to-be shogun. Far from executing Adams as a pirate, Ieyasu made him one of his most trusted advisers. This biography traces Adams’s rise from humble pilot to a position of immense influence in Japan’s foreign relations. It unravels the subsequent diplomatic manoeuvres of the Western powers in the shogun’s empire, and Adams’s eventual downfall. This is the first full biography of Adams based on original Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese sources, and includes much previously unknown information. Frederik Cryns tells the authentic story of Adams’s chequered life in its historical context, taking us on a compelling journey into Adams’s complex inner feelings and cosmopolitan heart.

Iceland punches well above its weight in the world of music, producing global icons like Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, and Laufey, while at the same time nurturing a vibrant local scene. This book explores how Iceland’s unique social habits, institutions and everyday practices contribute to its thriving music culture. Tracing the development of Icelandic popular music since the rock ’n’ roll era, it examines key influences shaping the scene, from Reykjavík’s musicians to national institutions like radio and concert venues. With engaging explanations of sociological factors, the book sheds light on why Iceland has become a powerhouse in music. An illuminating journey through Iceland’s music history, this is a celebration of the artistry and cultural forces behind its global impact.

In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Spanish silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railroads and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against stubborn nature. Amrith's account of the ways in which the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men, but of other natural resources from around the globe, provides an essential new way of understanding war as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. So too does this book reveal the reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm.

The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates in gorgeous prose, and on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic—vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images—in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.

Now in paperback, The Globe traces humanity’s quest to understand the true shape of the Earth. Ancient Greek philosophers identified it as spherical in the fourth century BCE, with this knowledge spreading via Rome, India, and Central Asia. The Catholic Church accepted a round Earth well before Columbus, yet Jesuit missionaries only persuaded the Chinese to abandon their square-earth cosmology in the seventeenth century. Challenging traditional views on intellectual history, The Globe argues that recognising Earth’s spherical nature was humanity’s first major scientific breakthrough. Compelling and thought-provoking, the book explores how this discovery reshaped global perspectives across centuries.

The fascinating story of the Princesses of Hesse, four sisters at the heart of twentieth-century politics

A gripping family saga and a portrait of a world in turmoil

The Princesses of Hesse were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. After the death of their mother, Queen Victoria's favorite daughter Alice, the Queen stepped in, taking an almost manic interest in the motherless girl's marriage prospects. Very little went according to plan. Fortunately, Queen Victoria did not live to see her direst fears for the girls spouses being realized. She died in January 1901, just before her beloved Hesse granddaughters became caught up in the maelstrom of early 20th century Europe.

The youngest sister, Alix, married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; she was assassinated, along with the rest of her family, in a cellar in Ekaterinburg.
The second, Ella, married the Russian Grand Duke Serge. After he was assassinated, she became a nun, only to be assassinated by the Bolsheviks twenty-four hours after Alix in 1918.
The third, Irene, married the Kaiser's brother, Prince Henry, and was entangled in the 1918 German uprisings.
The eldest sister, Princess Victoria, married Prince Louis Battenberg, and became the mother of Lord Louis Mountbatten and grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Their lives were all dramatic, but this book - the first full-length biography of the Princesses of Hesse - also shows how they interacted as sisters, forever jostling for status and relaying the politics and intrigues that surrounded them.

Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen letters from the sisters as well as from their grandmother Queen Victoria, The Princesses of Hesse takes us on a sweeping journey across the tumultuous landscape of the turn of the century - from the dramas of the Russian Court to the Russian Revolution, and through both World Wars in which they often found themselves on opposing sides.

Both intimate and epic in scope, Frances Welch's biography sheds new light on the four sisters' lives, illuminating a remarkable period of history in the process.

A brand-new life of England’s greatest king from our best-selling medieval historian.

OVER 13M COPIES SOLD – THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING PHENOMENON – NUMBER 8 ON SUNDAY TIMES BEST OF THE BESTSELLER LISTFew books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular bestseller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.Through the story of three generations of women in her own family – the grandmother given to the warlord as a concubine, the Communist mother and the daughter herself – Jung Chang reveals the epic history of China's twentieth century.Breathtaking in its scope, unforgettable in its descriptions, this is a masterpiece which is extraordinary in every way.

A definitive exploration of how we grow, make, buy and eat our food around the world, and a guide to building a food system fit for the 21st century, from the Sunday Times-bestselling author of How the World Thinks.