Stay Alive

‘A captivating mosaic of wartime Berlin’ Katja Hoyer, Financial Times
‘Brilliant and beautifully written’ Anne Applebaum
‘Brings to life Berlin during World War II so vividly that you can imagine yourself blithely strolling the streets of the city or hunkering down in the bomb shelters’ Barbara Demick
‘A rich and fascinating portrait of Berlin at war’ Literary Review
‘Wonderfully nuanced’ Guardian

When war broke out in September 1939, what was most striking in the German capital at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, soon got unfathomably worse.

Drawing on diaries, letters and memoirs, Stay Alive chronicles daily life in wartime Berlin with extraordinary power and immediacy. Here are the movie stars and swing dancers, the resistance circles and SS patrols hunting deserters, the desperate calculations of survival and collaboration. As Allied bombs reduced the city to rubble and Soviet troops closed in, the common greeting of Berliners became not auf Wiedersehen or Heil Hitler but bleiben Sie übrig – ‘Stay alive’.

Revelatory, devastating and deeply humane, this book illuminates how ordinary people navigated the moral catastrophe of the Third Reich – what it meant to resist, to conform or simply to endure. Buruma shows how a society’s accommodation to evil unfolds one compromise at a time, and why understanding this descent remains urgently relevant today.

Shadow Before the Flame

In the 1930s, the airship was viewed as the future of transatlantic travel and a brave new era of global connectedness. Germany’s safe, fast and efficient airships brought it back into the international fold after its humiliation in World War I. But on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg airship caught fire in the sky over New Jersey in a blaze that shocked the world and presaged another era of senseless violence.

In Shadow Before the Flame, acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz uncovers fresh research that unveils the Hindenburg disaster at a pivotal moment in time, coming as it does at the crossroads of the rising tension between fascist Germany and the United States. Katz traces the experiences of a captivating cast of characters: an heiress, a world-renowned acrobat, a German Jew working to save his family from the clutches of Nazism, a young cabin boy on his first voyage with the crew. Meanwhile, on the ground were two intrepid journalists whose reporting on the Hindenburg would invent breaking news as we now know it.

In a gripping, ticking-clock narrative, Shadow Before the Flame is a story that begins with the promise of a future made bright by technological innovation and ends with caskets draped in swastikas in New York City.

Rome: A History in Seven Sackings

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Waterstone’s Book of the Month, 2018
Nominated for the 2017 Pen Hessell-Tiltman

Mail on Sunday’s the Best Paperback, 2018

A sweeping history of the city of Rome, seen through the eyes of its most significant sackings, from the Gauls to the Nazis and everything in between.

No city on earth has preserved its past as Rome has. Visitors can cross bridges that were crossed by Julius Caesar and explore temples visited by Roman emperors. These architectural survivals are all the more remarkable considering the city has been repeatedly ravaged by roving armies.

From the Gauls to the Nazis, Matthew Kneale tells the stories behind the seven most important of these attacks and reveals, with fascinating insight, how they transformed the city – and not always for the worse.

A meticulously researched, magical blend of travelogue, social and cultural history, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings is a celebration of the fierce courage, panache and vitality of the Roman people. Most of all, it is a passionate love letter to this incomparable city.

Why the Germans Do it Better

***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***
BOOK OF THE YEAR IN GUARDIAN, ECONOMIST & NEW STATESMAN
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

‘Excellent and provocative… a passionate, timely book.’ Sunday Times
‘A fine new book… thoughtful, deeply reported and impeccably even-handed.’ The Times

Emerging from a collection of city states 150 years ago, no other country has had as turbulent a history as Germany or enjoyed so much prosperity in such a short time frame. Today, as much of the world succumbs to authoritarianism and democracy is undermined from its heart, Germany stands as a bulwark for decency and stability.

Mixing personal journey and anecdote with compelling empirical evidence, this is a critical and entertaining exploration of the country many in the West still love to hate. Raising important questions for our post-Brexit landscape, Kampfner asks why, despite its faults, Germany has become a model for others to emulate, while Britain fails to tackle contemporary challenges. Part memoir, part history, part travelogue, Why the Germans Do It Better is a rich and witty portrait of an eternally fascinating country.

In Search Of Berlin

A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ONDAATJE PRIZE

‘A masterful portrait of one of the world’s greatest cities… A must-read’ PETER FRANKOPAN

‘Such a delightful read’ KATJA HOYER, The Times

‘Berlin may well be Europe’s most enigmatic city and John Kampfner is the ideal guide.’ JONATHAN FREEDLAND, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist

‘Gripping’ Financial Times

No other city has had so many lives, survived so many disasters and has reinvented itself so many times. No other city is like Berlin.

Ever since John Kampfner was a young journalist in Communist East Berlin, he hasn’t been able to get the city out of his mind. It is a place tortured by its past, obsessed with memories, a place where traumas are unleashed and the traumatised have gathered.

Over the past four years Kampfner has walked the length and breadth of Berlin, delving into the archives, and talking to historians and writers, architects and archaeologists. He clambers onto a fallen statue of Lenin; he rummages in boxes of early Medieval bones; he learns about the cabaret star so outrageous she was thrown out of the city.

Berlin has been a military barracks, industrial powerhouse, centre of learning, hotbed of decadence – and the laboratory for the worst experiment in horror known to man. Now a city of refuge, it is home to 180 nationalities, and more than a quarter of the population has a migrant background. Berlin never stands still. It is never satisfied. But it is now the irresistible capital to which the world is gravitating.

In Search of Berlin is an 800-year story, a dialogue between past and present; it is a new way of looking at this turbulent and beguiling city on its never-ending journey of reinvention.

Dark Brilliance

A sweeping history of the Age of Reason, which shows how, although it was a time of progress in many areas, it was also an era of brutality and intolerance, by the author of The Borgias and The Florentines.

During the 1600s, between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment, Europe lived through an era known as the Age of Reason. This was a revolutionary period which saw great advances in areas such as art, science, philosophy, political theory and economics.

However, all this was accomplished against a background of extreme political turbulence and irrational behaviour on a continental scale in the form of internal conflicts and international wars. Indeed, the Age of Reason itself was born at the same time as the Thirty Years’ War, which would devastate central Europe to an extent that would not be seen again until the twentieth century.

By exploring all the key events and bringing to life some of the most influential characters of the era, including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV and Charles I, Paul Strathern tells the story of this paradoxical age, while also counting the human cost of imposing the progress and modernity upon which the Western world was built.

The Lost Gutenberg

‘An entertaining and insightful human story of obsession about books.’ Daily Telegraph

‘A lively tale of historical innovation, the thrill of the bibliophile’s hunt, greed and betrayal.’ New York Times

The never-before-told story of one extremely rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and its impact on the lives of the fanatical few who were lucky enough to own it.

For rare book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible – there are only forty-six in existence – is the undisputed gem of any collection. The Lost Gutenberg recounts five centuries in the life of one particular copy of the Bible from its very creation by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault under the protection of the Japanese government.

Margaret Leslie Davis draws readers into this incredible saga, inviting them into the colourful lives of each of its fanatic collectors along the way. Exploring books as objects of desire across centuries, Davis will leave readers not only with a broader understanding of the culture of rare book collectors, but with a deeper awareness of the importance of books in our world.

Histories of the Unexpected: The Romans

Histories of the Unexpected not only presents a new way of thinking about the past, but also reveals the world around us as never before.

Traditionally, the Romans have been understood in a straightforward way but the period really comes alive if you take an unexpected approach to its history. Yes, emperors, the development of civilisation and armies all have a fascinating history… but so too do tattoos, collecting, fattening, recycling, walking, poison, fish, inkwells and wicked stepmothers!

Each of these subjects is equally fascinating in its own right, and each sheds new light on the traditional subjects and themes that we think we know so well.

The Rome Plague Diaries

On the first morning of Rome’s Covid-19 lockdown Matthew Kneale felt an urge to connect with friends and acquaintances and began writing an email, describing where he was, what was happening and what it felt like, and sent it to everyone he could think of. He was soon composing daily reports as he tried to comprehend a period of time, when everyone’s lives suddenly changed and Italy struggled against an epidemic, that was so strange, so troubling and so fascinating that he found it impossible to think about anything else.

Having lived in Rome for eighteen years, Matthew has grown to know the capital and its citizens well and this collection of brilliant diary pieces connects what he has learned about the city with this extraordinary, anxious moment, revealing the Romans through the intense prism of the coronavirus crisis.