Ancient Naval

A fresh account of some of history's greatest warriors. The Vikings had an extraordinary and far-reaching historical impact. From the eighth to the 11th centuries, they ranged across Europe - raiding, exploring, and colonizing - and their presence was felt as far away as Russia and Byzantium. They are most famous as warriors, yet perhaps their talent for warfare is too little understood.

Themistocles (524–459 BC) came of age just as a newly democratic and empowered Athens was emerging. He would become an instrumental political and military figure, fighting in the Battle of Marathon; persuading Athenians to expand their fleet; and engineering the Athenians' defeat of the...

A “splendid” (The Wall Street Journal) account of one of history’s most important and yet little-known wars, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, whose outcome determined the future of the Roman Empire. Following Caesar’s assassination and Mark Antony’s defeat of...

Zheng He's Treasure Fleets: The Voyages That Could Have Changed the World In 1405, sixty years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic in a 60-foot ship with 90 men, China launched an armada of over 300 vessels and 27,000 crew into the Indian Ocean. The flagship was 400 feet long. The commander was a castrated slave who had risen to become the most powerful admiral in the world. His name was Zheng He. And the story of what he accomplished — and why China chose to stop — is one of the great untold dramas in world history. In this book, you'll discover: The extraordinary personal journey of ...

In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing ‘an art without a history’. ‘No-one’, it went on, ‘has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.’ Until now. Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity. The...

The Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 B.C. and continued intermittently for 27 years. It pitted the all-powerful land force of Sparta and its allies against the supremely powerful naval force of Athens. Thucydides actually participated in this conflict, a war that he realized would have a greater influence on the history of Greece than any other. He vividly narrates exciting episodes and carefully describes tactical aspects of the war, and also provides illuminating character profiles.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Sunday Times number one bestselling author returns to Ancient Rome in his latest thriller – coming August 2026. Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has...

Every sailor in the Caribbean knows the myth of the man who walked out of the fire. They say No-Beard was burned alive by mutineers and returned as a revenant with a heart as cold as the deep . Now, the most feared captain on the water is hunting for more than just merchant silver. He is hunting for the Black Reef Vault, a legendary treasure hoard guarded by something ancient and hungry . When the galleon Nuestra Señora del Sol is trapped in an unnatural fog, its crew discovers the true price of legend . No-Beard has the map to a place where the tides defy the moon and the rocks have teeth...

The flowering of Greek civilization was further made possible by an increase of trade between the cities and with other civilizations. Trade became a major occupation on account of the scarcity of agricultural land in the largely mountainous regions of the Balkan peninsula. The polis of Athens, in particular, assumed economic dominance in the Aegean in from the sixth century BC. The consequent increase in wealth, resources, and population made a cultural renaissance possible.