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John Zubrzycki

'A masterpiece of compression... conveys 5,000 years of history with flair and authority' JOHN KEAY
From the tantalising traces of ancient Harappan civilisation to the emerging superpower of today, here is India's story in all its contradictions, drama and splendour.

In
The Shortest History of India, John Zubrzycki distils five millennia of gods and kings, conquerors and colonisers into an epic tale teeming with personalities both legendary and largely unknown outside India. Gautama Buddha, Alexander the Great and Mahatma Gandhi share the stage with Candragupta ('India's Julius Caesar'), Nizam Saqqa, the water-carrier who became king for a day, and Raziyya, the first Muslim woman to rule in the subcontinent.

The later chapters reveal a modern India riven by contrasts: the brutal reality of partition and the fantasies of Bollywood, booming IT businesses and expanding slums. In conclusion, Zubrzycki asks whether internal challenges - from religious tensions to an increasingly undemocratic regime - might still thwart India's rise to wealth and power.

Old Street Publishing

Shortest Histories

The Shortest History of India

David Baker

'Humorous and accessible but never trivial... full of entertainment and insight' SUSAN QUILLIAM, co-author of The Joy of Sex

How did sex begin?

How did it evolve to be so varied in humans?

What might sex look like in the future?
The Shortest History of Sex traces the long evolution of human sexuality from the first microscopic couplings two billion years ago to today's somewhat baffling array of passions, impulses and fetishes.

From the basic underlying chemistry to the tortuous complexities of the 21st-century human, David Baker lifts the lid on one of nature's primary forces. This is an erudite and entertaining book that tackles large questions with humour and insight – an essential guide for the curious reader.

The Shortest History of Sex: Two Billion Years of Procreation and Recreation

Andrew Leigh

'If you read just one book about economics, make it Andrew Leigh's clear, insightful, remarkable - and short - work'
Claudia Goldin, Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics
The Shortest History of Economics unearths the hidden economic forces behind war, innovation and social transformation, tracing how capitalism and the market system emerged.
From the emergence of agriculture to the war in Ukraine, Andrew Leigh weaves a fascinating narrative punctuated by expert insights into major moments in human history – why the invention of the plough led to gender inequality, how certain diseases determined the patterns of colonialism, and even how New York's robber barons inspired the board game Monopoly.
Always accessible, expertly written and highly illuminating, The Shortest History of Economics is a perfect introduction to the subject.

The Shortest History of Economics

Ross King

'King's supreme ability is to imagine himself into the past. The scope of his knowledge is staggering' JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES

From Michelangelo to Mussolini, Nero to Meloni, Galileo to Garibaldi, here is the sparkling story of the world's most influential peninsula.

The calendar, the university, the piano; the Vespa, the pistol and the pizzeria… It is easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from somewhere sure of its place in the world. Yet these pages reveal a land rife with uncertainty even as its influence spread.

From the rise of the Roman Republic to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, from the glories of Renaissance Florence to the long struggle for unification, from Europe's first operas to the world's first ghettos, Ross King nimbly charts the checkered course of Italian history. In the last hundred years, film, fashion and Fiat – once bigger than Volkswagen – have emerged from the horrors of fascism and world war.

The Shortest History of Italy is a majestic sweep across three millennia of history that not only shaped Europe but the wider world.

The Shortest History of Italy

Ian Goldin

*Released early for the UK election.*

From our earliest wanderings to the rise of the digital nomad, here is the story of human migration.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the ability of Homo sapiens to travel across vast distances and adapt to new environments has been key to our survival as a species. Yet this deep migratory impulse is being tested as never before. By building ever stronger walls and raising barriers to progress, governments are harming the lives of migrants and threatening the future well-being of our societies.

In The Shortest History of Migration, a visionary thinker tells a story of the movement of peoples that spans every age and continent and goes to the heart of what makes us human. Drawn from ancient records and the latest genetic research, it recounts strange, terrible and uplifting tales of migrants past and present, examining the legacies of empire, slavery and war.

Finally, Goldin turns his attention to today's world, bringing together the evidence of history with the most recent data to suggest how we might create a more humane future -- one that allows us to reap the tremendous benefits that migration can offer.

The Shortest History of Migration

Lesley Downer

'A terrific overview of Japan's long and rich history... covers an astonishing amount of ground' PETER FRANKOPAN
Japan is a country of islands, strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland...
Ever since US Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its borders in 1853, the culture of this remarkable and distant archipelago has enriched western life. At the same time the country has embraced foreign institutions from baseball to barber shops. Yet for centuries under the rule of the shoguns, the islands were largely sealed off from the outside world. In charting a course between openness and insularity, Japan has found a way to become ultra-modern while breathing new life into its own unique traditions.
In The Shortest History of Japan, Lesley Downer brings an expert storyteller's eye to the sweep of Japanese history. Here are the emperors and warlords, the samurai and women warriors, the merchants and geisha who shaped this extraordinary modern society. From the hunter-gatherers who fashioned the world's first pots to the novel-writing ladies of the eleventh-century Heian court, from the devastation of Hiroshima to today's economic and cultural powerhouse, this is an indispensable, riveting history of the land of the rising sun.

The Shortest History of Japan

Andrew Ford

'Wonderful... as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory'
Clemency Burton-Hill
'Although music is as intrinsic to human life as the air we breathe, we must never fall for the line that it is a universal language. Music is neither universal, nor a language.'
From an infant's first experimental sounds to the voice of Elvis – via Hildegard of Bingen, Beethoven and bebop – The Shortest History of Music sets out to understand what exactly music is, and why humans are irresistibly drawn to making it.
Ranging across millennia, Andrew Ford explores music's great themes: writing it down and recording it; paying for it and making it modern. With brilliant insight, he traces the story of the symphony and the opera, blues and jazz; the oral traditions of folk singers and chain gangs; and the lives of the greats – Bach and Mozart, Clara Schumann and Schoenberg, Charlie Parker and Nina Simone.
From lullabies to national anthems, songlines to streaming, this is a sparkling account of what music has meant at different times and in different places.

Shortest Histories - The book series

Shortest Histories - The book series

Shortest Histories books in order

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