21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges....

Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus looked to the future. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century explores the present....

He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called “the devil” by the enemies he hunted and “the legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers....

A vivid and authoritative account of the making of the modern Middle East, from the BBC’s long-serving correspondent in the region....

In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and understrength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers....

The biggest threat to our freedom in the 21st century isn’t coronavirus but hysterically woke liberals trying to kill democracy by suppressing free speech....  

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from 20 countries, ranging as far back as the 18th century, to uncover key economic and social patterns....

1983 was a supremely dangerous year - even more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis....

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, Trump....

Should we stop caring about fading regional powers like China, Russia, Germany, and Iran? Will the collapse of international cooperation push France, Turkey, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to the top of international concerns? Find out more....

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Road to Unfreedom, written and read by Timothy Snyder....

Despite the importance of Europe's politics, economy and culture, there has not been - until now - a concise book to tell this story....

Geography comes before history. Islands cannot have the same history as continental plains....

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of Northeast Japan....

This is a sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas that culminated in the assault on America....

The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created 100 years ago. MI6 provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction....

In April 2006, the elite 3 Para battlegroup was despatched to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan....

Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later....

In The End Is Always Near, Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colourful ways, exploring a question that has hung over humanity like the sword of Damocles from the collapse of the Bronze Age to the nuclear era - that of human survival....

Steve Coll tells the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11....

This book defines and exposes modern anti-semitism. It shows how the scourge of Jew-hatred is as virulent as it ever was, and how modern anti-semites hide their hate behind the pretexts of "human rights" and "international law"....

Michael Reid overturns the stereotypical view of Spain as a country haunted by its Francoist past and presents an incisive account of modern Spain, from the death of Franco to the Catalan referendum and beyond....

At some point in the 1980s we gave up on the future. Before then, we imagined wonderful days to come, free from disease, work and want, in television series like Star Trek or events such as the 1939 Futurama World Fair.... 

Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton....

A chronicle of life on the resplendent island.....

Spain's transition to democracy after Franco's long dictatorship was widely hailed as a success, ushering in three decades of unprecedented progress and prosperity. Yet over the past decade, its political consensus has been under severe strain. A stable two-party system has splintered, with disruptive new parties on the far left and far right. No government has had a majority since 2015. Michael Reid overturns the stereotypical view of Spain as a country haunted by its Francoist past.

Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war—and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows increasingly isolated. Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences.

What do you remember about 2020? Do you remember where you were when you first learned your state was going to lock down? Do you remember how long that first week felt, when nothing was certain and normal life seemed to fall away piece by piece? Now that we've had a moment to breathe, it's important to look back at what happened during those trying times so that we can remember the lessons we all learned. From the 2020 election to the George Floyd killing, this book is a time capsule of a shared moment in history voiced by over 15 different actors.

AK47s, masked thugs, and brutal urgency erupt from Roy Hallums' account of his abduction in Iraq, shredding through those frequently sterile cable news reports revealing that another "American contractor is being held hostage...". Hallums was the everyman behind that report⁠—a 56-year-old retired Naval commander working as a food supply contractor in Baghdad's high-end Mansour District. His abduction was transacted in a matter of minutes, amidst a hail of gunfire and a handful of casualties.

Today's world is in flux. Competition between the great powers is back on the agenda and governments around the world are turning to secret statecraft and the hidden hand to navigate these uncertain waters. From poisonings to electoral interference, subversion to cyber sabotage, states increasingly operate in the shadows, while social media has created new avenues for disinformation on a mass scale. This is covert action: perhaps the most sensitive—and controversial—of all state activity.