18th Century

Robert K. Massie returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became Catherine the Great. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of Russia by sheer determination....

From New York Times bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Charles King comes the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah.

In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years' War - long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution - takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both....

France's iconic queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous "Let them eat cake", was alternately revered and reviled during her lifetime....

Piecing together his family history through archival documents, Tyler LeBlanc tells the story of his ancestor Joseph LeBlanc and the LeBlanc family during the Great Expulsion....

When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered an event of global consequence: the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society.

Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows....

Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day....

Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of "the Club", a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern....

Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates' trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world....