The Greek Revolution offers the best and fullest explanation, to date, for a series of events whose effects would change the entire geopolitics of Europe. Written with compassion and understanding for the human cost of that achievement, it deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come.

Exquisite detail, altogether impressive ... a cornucopia of revolution.

Compelling and disturbing, enriched by many new sources and excellent colour illustrations, and paying attention to the role of Ottomans and Albanians as well as Greeks, Mazower's book will become the standard account of this crucial revolution.

An engaging combination of fast-flowing narrative and insightful analysis.

Encyclopaedic ... superbly subtle and thorough.

With vivid detail, impeccable scholarship and great nuance, Mazower shows how the modern idea of the nation emerges out of the complex, sometimes random and often messy interactions between a plurality of agents ... An illuminating account of both the unifying power of myths about the past, and the dangers inherent when such myths are connected to political reality.

As the subtitle of Mark Mazower's new book maintains, events in Greece 200 years ago helped shape modern Europe. His elegant and rigorous account also holds lessons for modern geopolitics: about the galvanising effects of violence, the role of foreign intervention and the design flaws in dreams.

An epic narrative, both scholarly, breathlessly page-turning and packed with hauntingly romantic characters. Few historians dig so deep or with such sympathy into what history felt like to those living through it ... anyone in search of an opera plot should scour these drama-packed pages.

Broad in scope and colorful in detail, this is a masterful portrait of a historic watershed. ... [A] sweeping history of Greece's 1821 war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. [Mazower] recounts the revolution's inception among Greek emigrés with an idealistic dream of Hellenic nationalism and its actuality as a murky, eight-year struggle fought mainly by peasants and warlords who were motivated less by patriotism than by religious hatred of Muslims, factional vendettas, and mercenary self-interest ... A lucid, elegantly written, and often gripping account.

On the bicentennial of the Greek revolution, a prominent scholar tracks the historical detail and enormous international significance of the improbable, largely grassroots uprising against the Ottoman Empire. Mazower, a Columbia professor and winner of the Wolfson Prize for History who has written extensively about Greece and the Balkans, ably ties together the many disparate threads of this complex history of Greek independence. ... An elucidating history that is relevant to understanding the geopolitics of Greece today.

Magnificent ... Sophisticated analysis and beautiful prose ... The author vividly depicts a Europe grasping toward the future.

Combines over-arching analysis and explanation with a ground-level reporter’s skill at narrating events and capturing character with vividness and compassion … a historian working at the height of his powers.

Here is that rare thing: a little-known story of the Great War, featuring a pioneering surgeon every bit as daring as the soldiers he saved. Beautifully written, illuminating, and bursting with fascinating detail, The Facemaker is a groundbreaking work that deserves its own genre: medical noir. You won't be able to put it down

I was an admirer of Fitzharris's award-winning first book, The Butchering Art, about Joseph Lister. This is her absorbing account of another surgeon: Harold Gillies, who established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction

Equal parts devastating and inspiring. The horrors of war are laid bare here, but the stories of each of the soldiers, doctors, nurses, and artists are incredibly poignant and fascinating. I couldn't put it down

An extraordinary story about a remarkable man whose work, determination and skill changed countless lives

Graphic yet inspiring, engaging... [Fitzharris] delivers a consistently vivid account... An excellent biography of a genuine miracle worker

Wonderful... It was written with a clarity that I loved - although the book is packed with fascinating information, it read as easily as a novel... It is really inspiring and beautifully written

A fascinating portrait of pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies and the soldiers whose faces he rebuilt during WWI... Meticulously researched and compulsively readable, this exceptional history showcases how compassion and innovation can help mitigate the terrible wounds of war

Sometimes, you just know. From the moment I read The Facemaker's excellent prologue, I knew I had a book on my hands... Fitzharris is a gifted storyteller and delights in just about the right amount of detail

Informative... A powerful portrait of a gifted man

The Facemaker conveys the emotional, physical and psychical effects of having an injured and altered face, directly from those who had to deal with them... Powerful

In The Facemaker, Fitzharris rescues another vital yet largely forgotten figure from history. Blending scrupulous research with a novelist's eye, the author charts Gillies's extraordinary contribution to reconstructive surgery and weaves in touching accounts of the soldiers he treated. Stark and occasionally unsettling, the book reveals Gillies as both a craftsman and an artist, and underlines how by restoring the faces of the maimed Gillies was also restoring their lives and identities

Vividly thrilling

Full of breath-taking events at the cross-roads of empires at a moment in history when notions such as Europe, Asia, Christianity and Islam were infinitely more fluid and permeable than they are today

Original... de Bellaigue... offers a vivid presentation of events, re-imagined as scenes and episodes... a different, literary kind [of history]

De Bellaigue writes with impecable scholarship, piecing together contemporary accounts to create a thrilling narrative

De Bellaigue is an expert stylist, sensitive to rhythm and vocabulary, and passionate in his pursuit of the fugitive detail that gives meaning to a whole episode

An exhilarating read

An engrossing book... This is history turned into drama and poetry, awesomely spectacular yet also intensely intimate

The world of Suleyman the Magnificent...is brought to life in this history

A masterpiece

Jessie Child's The Siege of Loyalty House turns an English Civil War stand-off into a fable of murderous polarisation: gripping, timely history

The Siege of Loyalty House ... tingles with a discerning historical imagination

[A] thrilling tale of war

[A] gripping tale of a royalist house standing its grown against the Roundheads ... Atmospheric, unflinching, and at times extraordinarily witty

[A] poignant book... the story is timeless

Compelling

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, [The Siege of Loyalty House] tells the story of the epic two-year siege of Basing House, a royalist mansion finally captured by Oliver Cromwell in 1645.

When you are as good a writer as Jessie Childs, and as assuredly immersed in the archives, the pages zing with the technicolour of celluloid. ... [A] masterpiece.

Childs writes an engrossing, spellbinding narrative while laying out a clear and comprehendible history

The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless

A gripping account of the agony at Basing, The Siege of Loyalty House is also a potted social history of the civil wars and how they started. Jessie Childs, [is] a gifted storyteller