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A comprehensive list of recent ๐Ÿ“š popular history books below! Click the covers to see more details on that book, also our review ๐Ÿ“ if available.

For more info see notes. You can also have a poke around the underlying data, which allows you to do a text search, and lets you see a few extra details.

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Showing the 100 most recently published history books

Warrior Monks: Politics and Power in Medieval Britain
Crucible of Light: Islam and the forging of Europe from the 8th to the 21st Century
Revolting: A Riotous History of the World
On Antisemitism: A Word in History
Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower
We the People: A History of the US Constitution
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeareโ€™s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe
Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers
Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016
The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty
The Wars of the Roses: A Medieval Civil War
A Scandal in Kรถnigsberg
A History of England in 25 Poems
The First King of England: ร†thelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan
Three Rivers: The Hidden Histories of the Waterways That Made Europe
Artists of History: Churchill and de Gaulle - the Last Titans
Born: A History of Childbirth
Domination: The fall of the Roman empire and the rise of Christianity
Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power
The Mirror of Great Britain: A Life of James VI and I
Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations
Cultures of the Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem: Frontier Inventiveness in the Age of the Crusades
Central Europe: The Death of a Civilization and the Life of an Idea
Seven Rivers: A Journey Through the Currents of Human History
Carthage: A new history of an ancient empire
King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Unmaking of the Modern Middle East
Goliath's Curse: A Deep History of Societal Collapse and What it Means for Our Future
The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes
The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court
A Guide to Hillforts of Britain, An Aerial View: The Legacy of the Iron Age Dobunni Tribe
Reframing Blackness: What's Black about History of Art ?
Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World
The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe
Worlds of Unfreedom: West Central Africa in the Era of Global Abolition
Glorius Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India
Three Revolutions: Russia, China, Cuba and the Epic Journeys That Changed the World
The Heretic of Cacheu: Struggles Over Life in a Seventeenth-Century West African Port
Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling
The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends 1642
The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico
Raising the Tudors: Motherhood in Sixteenth-Century England
An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death
Starwatchers: A History of Discovery in the Night Sky
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour
Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age: 1895-1965
Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean
India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent
The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance
No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One
Prehistoric London: The Capital Before the Romans
Thomas More: A Life
The Buried City: Unearthing the Real Pompeii
The British Imagination: A History of Ideas from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II
Ring of Fire: A New Global History of the Outbreak of the First World War
How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy
Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life
Horace: Poet on a Volcano
When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors
The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession
Tequila Wars: Josรฉ Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico
Peak Human: What We Can Learn from History's Greatest Civilizations
No Ordinary Deaths: A People's History of Mortality
The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain
Conquering the North: China, Russia, Mongolia: 2,000 Years of Conflict
America, Amรฉrica: A New History of the New World
The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain
The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story
The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
The Fiery Spirits: Popular protest, Parliament and the English Revolution
We Were There: The Untold Black British Stories That Shaped Our Country
Mythica: The Untold History of the Real Women Behind Homer's Myths
The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West
Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra
What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife
The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825
What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea
The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugรฉnie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe
Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery
Between the Salt and the Ash: A Journey Into the Soul of Northumbria
Star and Key: The Historical Adventure of Mauritius
Rot: A History of the Irish Famine
The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism
The Golden Throne: The Rule of Suleyman the Magnificent
Antwerp and the Golden Age: Culture, Conflict and Commerce
The Celts: A Modern History
Humans: A Monstrous History
The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History
Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain's First King
Maria Theresa - Empress: The Making of the Austrian Enlightenment
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
The Forgotten Era: Nigeria Before British Rule
Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge
The Mercian Chronicles: King Offa and the Birth of the Anglo-Saxon State, AD 630-918
The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past
Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War
Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age
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Notes (return to top โ†‘)

  • The purpose of this list is to give you a good feel for all the history books published recently in hardback in the UK, ordered by publication date with the newest at the top. When you first load the page it will show the first 100 most recently published books, but you can see many more less recent books if you use the filter. It is a reasonably exhaustive list butโ€ฆ
    • I have excluded military history books which I see as a category all on its own (and would if included have swamped the non-military history books).
    • I have excluded history books that I see as too โ€œlocalโ€ eg the many books on particular aspects of the US Civil War, or the many books focussing on relatives of medieval English kings.
  • The filter is an AND filter. For example if you select '๐Ÿ—“๏ธ 2021' and '๐Ÿ‘‘ Political' then only books that have both attributes will be shown - 2021 AND Political. I think this is most useful because it allows you to narrow down your search to smaller and smaller subsets.
  • This history book database is hand-curated - the categories for the books are chosen by me when I do my monthly roundup. This means they can't be manipulated to boost sales (โ€œhey my book is in all the categories...โ€) but also that you may or may not agree with my judgement ๐Ÿ™‚.
  • Links are provided to Amazon UK and US for convenience only, with no affiliation on my part. Please ignore them if you want to shop elsewhere.
  • Finally for the more technicially minded among you: this book filter is the front end of a Datasette read-only SQLite database using the API that is generated automatically when you pass SQL queries through a Datasette URL.