19th Century

The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire he had created....

'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago. MELBOURNE, 20 AUGUST 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the...

A gripping eyewitness account of a major 20th-century military conflict by the UK's most popular writer on geopolitics. The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999. Tim...

Murder, manslaughter, suicide, mishap - the very public business of determining death in colonial Sydney. Murder in colonial Sydney was a surprisingly rare occurrence, so when it did happen it caused a great sensation. People flocked to the scene of the crime, to the coroner's court and to the...

In 1864, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of Auckland Island....

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the...

Everyone from young adults to grandparents will be fascinated by the answers uncovered in James West Davidson's vividly told A Little History of the United States....

In 1858, 14-year-old Narcisse Pelletier sailed from Marseilles in the French trader Saint-Paul. With a cargo of Bordeaux wine, they stopped in Bombay, then Hong Kong, and from there they set sail with more than 300 Chinese prospectors bound for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. Around the...

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women....

Gunter K. Koschorrek was a machine-gunner on the Russian front in WWII. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, over five decades later, the fulfillment of a responsibility he feels to honor the memory of those who perished....

The bloodiest battle of the Civil War was also its turning point. From this point onwards, the Confederate forces would never gain a hold in the North again....

The Battle of Antietam was a turning point in the Civil War. In the span of several hours, there would be more loss of American life than in any other battle before or since....

THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE BBC'S MISS AUSTEN: THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANY JANE AUSTEN LOVER Readers LOVE Jane Austen at Home: 'A "tour de force" which should be in the reading list of anyone who has either read the books or watched the film adaptations.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book is a...

How did "the West" come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists?

The Sun and the Moon tells the true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited....

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

Read by Ryan Corr, acclaimed for his roles in Holding the Man and HBO's House of Dragon. Immerse yourself in the captivating, true story of a unique bushranger's life, perfect for history enthusiasts and true crime fans. From Walkley Award-winning writer Gary Linnell comes the true and epic...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Yasmin Mwanza. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Sarah Salih. Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to...

The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights....

The terrible conflict that dominated the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire....

The first of two ground-breaking volumes on the Waterloo campaign, this audiobook is based upon a detailed analysis of sources old and new in four languages....

Of all the mysteries of the deep, few rise to the level of the Mary Celeste....

Rifleman Harris was a soldier in the elite 95th Rifles, one of Britains most prestigous infantry units during the Napoleonic wars. In this memoir, Harris relates his experiences in Denmark, the Peninsular, and at Walcheren....

The northeastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile....

From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell comes “a masterwork of history” (Lawrence Wright, author of God Save Texas), the spellbinding, epic account of the last year of the Civil War. The fourth and final year of the Civil War...