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In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and report from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report....

“A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action, a chronicle of a war in progress from a partisan faithful to the idea of...

One summer day in 1941, half of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half, 1,600 men, women, and children, all but seven of the town's Jews. Neighbors tells their story. This is a shocking, brutal story that has never before been told. It is the most important study of Polish-Jewish relations to be published in decades and should become a classic of Holocaust literature. Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts and other evidence into an engulfing reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but forgotten by history.

In 2004 and 2005, striking images from the Ukraine made their way around the world, among them boisterous, orange-clad crowds protesting electoral fraud and the hideously scarred face of a poisoned opposition candidate. Europe's second-largest country but still an immature state only recently independent, Ukraine has become a test case of post-communist democracy, as millions of people in other countries celebrated the protesters' eventual victory.

In 1854, a quarter of a million British soldiers headed east to fight in the Crimean War. Together with their French and Turkish allies, the goal was to free the important port city of Sevastopol from the clutches of Russia, thus keeping them from the seizing control of the Red Sea and thence Mediterranean. This they did, but not without considerable hardship, suffering and loss of life - over 21,000 British men fell to enemy fire, accidents and disease.

Strange things are afoot in the city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea. A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery - among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the "anomalies". Meanwhile, Taras ­- who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his Opel Vectra - is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money.

Imagine you are nine years old. Your best friend’s father is arrested, half your classmates disappear from school, and someone burns down the house across the road. Imagine you have to cross a snow-covered mountain range at night in order to escape the soldiers who are trying to kill you. How would you deal with these memories once you are an adult? Jones, a relief worker and child psychiatrist, interviewed over 40 Serb and Muslim children who came of age during the Bosnian War and now returns, 20 years after the war began, to discover the adults they have become.

In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.

An unprecedented, page-turning narrative of the Nazi rise to power, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s post-invasion plans for Russia told through the recently discovered lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg – Hitler’s ‘philosopher’ and architect of Nazi ideology. Only recently discovered by former...

First biography of the great actress in a brilliant interpretation of Danuta Stenka. One-hundred-two years of fascinating life, turbulent career, and dramatic turns in history. Gabriel Michalik paints a subtle portrait of the legend of the theatre and cinema, the people she met, and the era through which she lived with natural elegance, grace, and unusual cheerfulness, in spite of dramatic obstacles.

Ukraine the Forging of a Nation offers listeners a chance to understand more about Ukraine's remarkable past, examining the crucial moments of Ukrainian and global history of the past 1000 years. In this compelling history, learn how the emergence of medieval states, the discovery of America, the industrial and French revolutions, two world wars, the emergence and collapse of totalitarian regimes, recent middle-class revolutions and the 2022 Russian invasion - are all closely affiliated.

Bloomsbury presents The White Fortress by Boyd and Beth Morrison, read by Mark Elstob. The thrilling new historical adventure in the Tales of the Lawless Land series set in 1350s Europe, from New York Times bestselling author Boyd Morrison and expert medievalist Beth Morrison. Croatia, 1351...

Discover the remarkable history of the Crimean War...The Crimean War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 19th century, but it is also one of the least remembered. More men died in the Crimean War than in the American Civil War which followed soon after. Yet the Crimean War is important for a number of reasons. Although it did not change the map of Europe and did not directly cause the fall of any of the combatants, it did indirectly shape the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the twentieth century in Europe.

Protests continue in Belarus in the aftermath of 2020's fraught presidential election. In this updated edition of his exploration of Belarus's complicated road to nationhood since it gained independence in 1991, Andrew Wilson has added two new chapters that reveal the extent of Aliaksandr Lukashenka's grip on power, the growth of the opposition movement and the violent crackdown that followed the vote. Wilson also examines the prospects for Europe as a whole of either Lukashenka's downfall or his survival with Russian support.

Paul Johnson, the most celebrated popular historian of our time, takes a scalpel to Stalin, whom he considers "one of the outstanding monsters of history."Johnson sets forth the essence of Stalin’s life, character, and career. "It has been a hateful task, which has caused me much pain and disgust," he writes with characteristic candor. "But it has been a duty I have performed not without a certain grim satisfaction."

März 2028: Russische Truppen erobern die estnische Kleinstadt Narwa und die Insel Hiiumaa in der Ostsee. Der Angriff auf das Baltikum hat begonnen. Jetzt rächt sich, dass Europa nach dem Ende des Krieges in der Ukraine nicht aufgerüstet hat und wichtige Fähigkeiten fehlen.

In this fascinating work, winner of the Wolfson Prize for History Mark Mazower uncovers the history of the Balkans with detail and clarity. He explores the reasons for current conflicts and examines the Balkans as a religious, cultural, and economic melting pot for Europe and Asia. Through Robert O'Keefe's articulate narration, listeners will be absorbed by this rich world.

Modern-day Lithuania is a small country bordering the Baltic Sea with a population of less than three million people, but despite its relative size, the nation has exerted an influential role on the history of the region. More recently, in the 20th century, Lithuania was caught between much larger powers in two world wars and then the Cold War. Along with neighbors Latvia and Estonia, Lithuania was one of the only states to truly break free of the Soviet Union when the latter dissolved in 1991.

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread?