A model of research and analysis ... Townshend's concise and intelligent book ... tells a painful story that is probably not yet over.

A layered and mostly fair assessment of the dynamics, deal, prejudices and delusions that created the Border in Ireland ... This is a timely and important book, not just because of the centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland but because so much of its content remains relevant to understanding contemporary preoccupations and controversies.

The completion of the trilogy is delivered with Townshend's characteristic scholarly panache ... he brings into unforgiving focus the carelessness, double-dealing and myopia which has bedevilled Britain's government of Ireland ... laconic but conclusive.

Townshend, a leading scholar of modern Irish history, has written an authoritative study of the origins of Ireland's partition.

An important book that provides not only a background to events one hundred years ago but is highly relevant to events that are still unfolding today ... Well written, full of insights and impressively topical.

Capturing the essence of 16th-century Antwerp is difficult; its story is as convoluted as its streets. That story does not lend itself to linearity; there's no single plot, no straight narrative lines. Michael Pye - journalist, broadcaster and prolific author - is the perfect chronicler of this extraordinary place, since he revels in complexity and never hesitates to use his abundant imagination. His prose is as opulent as the city itself. ... Pye provides a cornucopia of Antwerp's abundant delights.

Pye offers a master class on how to tell the story of a city. Fascinating and gloriously good fun.

Now a museum-like gem, for much of the 16th century, Antwerp thrived as Europe's most vibrant center of commerce, intellectual life, and free thought. Pye offers a colorful depiction of the city's 'exceptional years.' Entertaining. An impressionistic portrait of its institutions and great men (Bruegel, Erasmus, et al.), emphasizing the lives of now-obscure traders, bankers, entrepreneurs, officials, printers, and booksellers, including a surprising number of successful women and Jews. A vivid look at a great Renaissance city.

In a highly readable new book, Michael Pye argues that, during Europe's ages of discovery, it became one of the earliest genuinely global cities too ... If we understood more about Antwerp, though, we might understand more about ourselves and our long umbilical links to Europe.

exuberant ... Pye creates a thematic mosaic, drawing on a mass of accounts and original sources, from wills and inventories to doodles and self-help books. The book is dense with stories ... [which] reflect Antwerp's volatile, opportunistic, profit-grabbing ethos, loose ends and all ... Antwerp was, Pye claims, "the emporium for ideas as well as goods." Its trade in knowledge and its deals in art, books, and luxury goods were renowned across Europe.

Sean O'Driscoll's fair-minded examination of her extraordinary, often violent life . . . acknowledges her humanity and viciousness

Rich, compelling, and surprising. Fundamental physics can be equal parts awe-inspiring and head-spinning, and Close masterfully captures those qualities in this deeply satisfying tale of Peter Higgs's convoluted, and very human, journey through life and science.

beautifully, engagingly written ... I was reassured by the characteristic wisdom and honesty of Close's judgement that, while the discovery of the Higgs particle completes the Standard Model of the atom, "Internal completeness is a mathematical requirement, whereas describing the world around us is the demand of natural philosophy". That sentence alone makes Elusive my book of the year.

Frank Close is probably the perfect person to tell the tale of Higgs and his boson. A serious physicist himself, he is also an exceptional author - and, unlike with most authors, his subject actually occasionally speaks to him.

the first full biography of Higgs ... focuses just as much on Higgs the particle as he does on Higgs the scientist, and the physics concepts he explores can be daunting. But this excellent book is well worth the effort.

A compelling account of the long search for the Higgs boson

Because there would be no atoms or molecules without the intervention of the Higgs field, our very existence is a consequence of its reality ... a compulsive read. Besides explaining the physics and exploring the many personalities involved, it also conveys the excitement of physics research, the missed opportunities, the happy coincidences, the false trails, the social networks, the collaborations and professional rivalries. Like an established scientific fact that will stand for all time, this book is a definitive account of an historic scientific achievement.

Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance

No other English-language biography has so successfully given us a portrait of him as man and monarch ... superb.

The best single-volume account of the reign in any language

Authoritative ... Mansel is ideally positioned to examine Louis' record ... Time and space both yield before Mansel's authorial ambition

A superb biography ... wonderfully detailed and fluent ... Mansel is alive to every nuance