Always an interesting and engaging writer, Dartnell ... finds fascinating nuggets in familiar stories

I’ve always liked Dartnell’s books for their factiness

An illuminating journey through history using our bodies as the vehicle. It's quite a ride!

Wide-ranging, comprehensive and refreshing

A wild ride through science, history and prehistory, full of unexpected connections and delightful insights

A revolutionary account of human progress. This is history as you've never read it before: a gripping, red-blooded narrative from a master storyteller

A sublime, mind-expanding exploration of who we are and how we got here

Brilliantly entertaining and beautifully written, Being Human forces you to see the world in a totally new way. Interdisciplinary history at its best

A spirited canter through the ways our biology has inescapably affected world history that'll open your eyes and stretch your mind

Bursting with scientific stories, this is a fascinating exploration of how our flawed biology shapes how we live, love, thrive and die. Being Human will make you think in a new light about yourself and your species

A brilliant, super-informative and enjoyable read

Lewis Dartnell has a well-deserved reputation for engaging writing on big themes. Being Human is so engrossing that it's hard to put down

Dartnell has done it again. Full of surprising, vivid and profound lessons, this book is quite literally wonderful

[A] revealing survey ... Biology determines more than personal destiny

[A] fascinating lucky dip of a book

An utterly compelling account, deeply personal, persuasively authoritative, surely the must-read book for this challenging moment

For those trying to understand the roots of the war in Ukraine, there is no better guide than Serhii Plokhy. It's impossible to make sense of the Russian invasion of 2022 without knowing something of the history - recent and less recent - and the struggle for Ukrainian national identity; this compelling and lucid book illuminates both

The essential book for the Russia-Ukraine war - superb, accessible and erudite - by the world's chief expert. The must-read work

The thread of history is central to understanding Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Serhii Plokhy outlines this in fascinating detail and reminds us of the constant fragility of peace

Three hundred-odd pages roam through 50,000 years, and by the last it's almost impossible to disagree that infectious diseases are our permanent companion and ultimate adversary... The fluency of Kennedy's narration is remarkable, weaving Tolkien, Game of Thrones and Monty Python into memorable and accessible explanations of genetics, evolutionary biology and demography... Pathogenesis is a humbling story for humankind.

A superb achievement ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder