Political

Michael Grant offers the tale of Rome's most infamous emperor from both his fans and detractors.

Harold Kurtz continues the story of France's Napoleonic traitor.

Christopher Lloyd asserts that the first contacts between Elizabethan England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible mark the true birth of the British Empire.

Harold Kurtz describes how, ordered by Louis XVIII to arrest Napoleon on his return from Elba in 1815, Marshal Ney went over to his former master.

Anthony Rhodes introduces Diocletian, the first sovereign to voluntarily resign power, and how, at the opening of the fourth century, he spent his last years in a huge fortified seaside palace of his own construction.

Richard Harris describes the various forces of change at play in China's tumultuous first half century.

Roger L. Williams assesses exactly how enlightened a despot was Louis-Napoléon, in light of later European events.

Alfred Cobban traces the ups and downs of the quintessential Bourbon king of France.

C.H. Brown studies French imperial achievement in Morocco during the first half of the 20th century, as well as the nationalism with which it eventually came into conflict.

Nancy Mitford describes how Louis XV never talked politics out of the Council Chamber. Hunting was his only distraction until Madame de Pompadour introduced him to “plans and designs ... bibelots and stuffs ... gaiety and lightness.”