16th Century

From author Eric Metaxas comes a brilliant and inspiring biography of the most influential man in modern history, Martin Luther, in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation....

In The Faithful Executioner, Harrington vividly re-creates a life filled with stark contrasts, from the young apprentice's rigorous training under his executioner father....

Grounded in excellent primary source research, Thomas Cromwell gives an inside look at a monarchy that has captured the Western imagination for centuries....

England's Tudor monarchs - Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I - are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history....

The story of the 16th-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific.

Recounting Henry VIII's life and signal moments through the lens of his male relationships, Tracy Borman’s new biography reveals Henry’s personality in all its multi-faceted, contradictory glory, and sheds fresh light on his reign for anyone fascinated by the Tudor era and its legacy....

The life of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), ruler of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long intrigued biographers....

From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual upheaval of the 16th century. Martin Luther's challenge to church authority forced Christians to examine their beliefs in ways that shook the foundations of their religion....

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessors, Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London....

This is the story of Elizabeth I's inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life....

A groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world....

This superb account of the siege emphasises the crucial importance of the siege while at the same time putting it in a far wider context. While seen as a climactic battle between the West and the East, it was also much more nuanced than that.

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre....

A best-selling historian recounts 16 years that shook the world - the epic clash between Europe and the Ottoman Turks that ended the Renaissance and brought Islam to the gates of Vienna....

Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the 200-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day....

Catherine de Medici's father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement's exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, a diplomat par excellence....

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography....

At the start of the 16th century, England was hardly involved in the wider world, and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city....

Now an esoteric of legal and criminal history, A Hangman's Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Franz Schmidt's executions, which included hangings, beheadings, and other methods, as well as details of each capital crime and the reason for the punishment....

The Teutonic Knights were powerful and ferocious advocates of holy war. William Urban's narrative charts the rise and fall of the Order and, in an accessible and engaging style, throws light on a band of knights whose deeds and motives have long been misunderstood....

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time....

Philip II is not only the most famous king in Spanish history, but one of the most famous monarchs in English history: the man who married Mary Tudor and later launched the Spanish Armada against her sister Elizabeth I....

Una sera di settembre del 1533 Isabella d’Este, quasi sessantenne, rievoca la propria vicenda: dall’infanzia a Ferrara al matrimonio, sedicenne, con il marchese...

On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation comes this compelling, illuminating, and expansive religious history that examines the complicated and unintended legacies of Martin Luther....

In this dazzling global history that charts five centuries of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that Protestants made the modern world....