• The best books on Industrial Revolution - The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present by David S Landes
  • The best books on Industrial Revolution - Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History by Eric Jones
  • The best books on Industrial Revolution - The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Robert C. Allen
  • The best books on Industrial Revolution - The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 by Joel Mokyr
  • The best books on Industrial Revolution - Forging Ahead, Falling Behind and Fighting Back: British Economic Growth from the Industrial Revolution to the Financial Crisis by Nicholas Crafts

The best books on Industrial Revolution, recommended by Sheilagh Ogilvie

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world forever by enabling self-perpetuating economic growth. But historians are still at odds about why the industrial revolution happened where it did and when it did. Here, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, Oxford, guides us through the debates and why they are still relevant today.

  • The best books on Concentration Camps - Time Stood Still: My Internment in England, 1914-1918 by Paul Cohen-Portheim
  • The best books on Concentration Camps - KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann
  • The best books on Concentration Camps - Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler by Margarete Buber-Neumann
  • The best books on Concentration Camps - I Survived Auschwitz by Krystyna Zywulska
  • The best books on Concentration Camps - Bitter Winds by Harry Wu

The best books on Concentration Camps, recommended by Andrea Pitzer

Most of us associate concentration camps with Nazi Germany, but they are not, in fact, relics of the past or confined to one particular episode of history. Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, talks us through memoirs and books that illuminate a tool that has been widely used, since the late 19th century, for the mass detention of civilians without trial.

  • The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento - The Nation of the Risorgimento: Kinship, Sanctity and Honour in the Origins of Unified Italy by Alberto Mario Banti
  • The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento - The Antiquity of the Italian Nation: The Cultural Origins of Political Myth in Modern Italy by Antonino De Francisco
  • The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento - Risorgimento in Exile: Italian Emigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era by Maurizio Isabella
  • The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento - Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero by Lucy Riall
  • The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento - Monarchie et Identité Nationale en Italie (1861-1900) by Catherine Brice

The best books on Italy’s Risorgimento, recommended by Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti

Italian unification was one of the great political dramas of 19th century Europe, transforming a patchwork of territories speaking different languages into the nation-state of Italy. Here, historian Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti discusses the people and ideas that brought it about and how its disputed legacy continues to impact Italy today.

  • The best books on The Weimar Republic - Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz
  • The best books on The Weimar Republic - The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun
  • The best books on The Weimar Republic - The Spider's Web by Joseph Roth
  • The best books on The Weimar Republic - Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada
  • The best books on The Weimar Republic - Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937) by Harry Kessler

The best books on The Weimar Republic, recommended by Robert Gerwarth

The Weimar Republic was not doomed to fail, says the historian Robert Gerwarth; it was, in many ways, popularly rooted and successful, and its artistic achievements remain influential to this day. Here he selects five books that illustrate the rich cultural life of the Weimar Republic, its pioneering modernism and the febrile political atmosphere that gripped it in the wake of the Great Depression.

  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - Tante Jolesch or the Decline of the West in Anecdotes by Friedrich Torberg & Maria Poglitsch Bauer (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The Road into the Open by Arthur Schnitzler & Roger Byers (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig & Anthea Bell (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare

The best books on Jewish Vienna, recommended by Brigid Grauman

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Vienna had a vibrant intellectual and cultural life, embraced and at times led by key figures in its large Jewish community. All that would disappear with the rise of anti-Semitism and the Anschluss. Many Jews fled or committed suicide. Others were deported to concentration camps. After the war some went back, but Vienna would never be the same. Here Brigid Grauman, whose father’s family were assimilated Jews from Vienna, recommends books that evoke that poignant, tragic period that ended with World War II.

  • The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany - Germany 1770-1866 by James J Sheehan
  • The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany - Iron Kingdom: the Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark
  • The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany - Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
  • The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany - Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany by David Blackbourn
  • The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany - Namibia under German Rule by Helmut Bley

The best books on Nineteenth Century Germany, recommended by Richard Evans

At the beginning of the 1800s, Germany was a collection of independent states. By the end, it had been unified under Prussian political leadership into one of the world’s great powers. Here, Richard Evans, Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge and Provost of Gresham College in the City of London, chooses five books on 19th century Germany that illustrate how that process unfolded and what the political, economic and social consequences of it were—intended and otherwise.