Essays discuss Greek and Chineese art, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dutch genre painting, Rubens, Rembrandt, art collecting, museums, and Freud's aesthetics

‘A General History of the Pyrates’ is a captivating account of some of history’s most notorious pirates. The author, writing as Captain Charles Johnson, blends fiction and non-fiction to provide readers with a most entertaining version of these iconic heroes and villains. This book was a massive success upon its first release due to its adventurous stories filled with danger and treasure and its influence lives on to this day as it shaped the modern view of pirates. Some of the best accounts in the book are of the infamous Blackbeard and the trailblazing female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. ‘A General History of the Pyrates’ is the definitive story of the golden age of piracy and should be read by fans of books such as ‘Treasure Island’ and movies such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731) is one of the most important authors in the English language. Defoe was one of the original English novelists and greatly helped to popularise the form. Defoe was highly prolific and is believed to have written over 300 works ranging from novels to political pamphlets. He was highly celebrated but also controversial as his writings influenced politicians but also led to Defoe being imprisoned. Defoe’s novels have been translated into many languages and are still read across the globe to this day. Some of his most famous books include ‘Moll Flanders’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ which was adapted into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan and Damian Lewis in 1997. Defoe’s influence on English novels cannot be understated and his legacy lives on to this day.

A Short History of the World is a period-piece non-fictional historic work by English author H. G. Wells. The book was largely inspired by Wells's earlier 1919 work The Outline of History.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families • From the author of The Romanovs “Succession meets Game of Thrones.” —The Spectator • “The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs.” —The Economist, Best Books of the Year Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us. In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children. There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.