Modern History

Syria: The Desert and The Sown is a masterpiece of travel writing by Gertrude Bell, a pioneering Victorian explorer of Arabia, now available in a stunning Folio edition featuring her original photography.

Spanning 5,000 years from the Bronze Age to the present, India: A History is John Keay’s masterful story of the subcontinent; revised and updated for the Folio Society in this fully illustrated edition.

Simon Ball’s Alamein joins the Folio Society’s fully illustrated Great Battles series: a masterful analysis of Montgomery’s famous Second World War victory against Rommel’s North African forces, and its controversial legacy.

Published by Folio in its first-ever illustrated edition, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism is a ground-breaking study of how the Nazi and Soviet regimes came to power, which speaks directly to our own age.

A Bright Shining Lie is Neil Sheehan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Vietnam War told through lieutenant colonel John Paul Vann, with a new introduction by George Packer for The Folio Society.

Covering 3,000 years, John Keay’s China: A History chronicles one of the world’s great civilisations, from Confucius to Mao, in an exclusively updated Folio Society edition with lavish colour illustrations and a new introduction by the author.

Andrew Chaikin selects stunning new photography for The Folio Society edition of A Man on the Moon – his commanding history of the Apollo missions, with an introduction by Tom Hanks. 

Compiled, written and edited by Peter Gillman for The Folio Society, Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit is an exclusive record of five key expeditions, introduced by Wade Davis and Jan Morris with superlative photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives.

Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year depicts London in a deadly pandemic. This Folio Society edition, with beautiful woodcuts by Chris Wormell, is introduced by editor-in-chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton.

The international best-selling autobiography of the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom is published by Folio as a striking collector’s edition featuring 41 pages of photographs and an evocative new binding.

An illustrated Folio Society edition of Christopher Clark’s magisterial history of Prussia from 1600 to the aftermath of the Second World War – winner of awards including the Wolfson History Prize.

A beautiful three-volume Folio edition of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s epic history of Christianity – a landmark of scholarship presented with superb colour images and an exclusive new introduction from historian Neil MacGregor

A unique Folio edition of Winston Churchill’s 50 finest speeches to inspire Britain during the Second World War, with a new introduction by his grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames.

Featuring a new foreword and maps, Eagle Against the Sun is Ronald H. Spector’s definitive history of World War Two in the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In this newly updated Folio edition, Greil Marcus’s masterful history of rock ‘n’ roll and American culture, Mystery Train, is beautifully illustrated with archive photography and full-colour album covers, introduced by the author.

For the first time, full-colour images illustrate Norman Davies’s magisterial work, Europe: A History, in an elegant three-volume edition from The Folio Society, fully updated by the author.

The fascinating working lives of ordinary people are revealed in Studs Terkel’s masterful chronicle of American life, published as an illustrated edition for the first time by Folio.

Illustrated with archive photography, Ryszard Kapuściński’s masterpiece of reportage, Shah of Shahs, is a welcome addition to the Folio collection.

The Folio Society edition of The Mark of Command superbly presents celebrated military historian John Keegan’s appraisal of four famous generals: Alexander the Great, Wellington, Ulysses S. Grant and Hitler.

The Folio Society edition of The Longest Day commemorates the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Cornelius Ryan’s riveting text is complemented by 42 integrated photographs, and a binding image by Robert Capa.

London and New York, 40 rare photogravures by a master of the art, in facsimile for the first time.

This lavishly illustrated edition of Mayflower meets you on board a storm-lashed ship filled with resolute Pilgrims and leaves you a generation later in the blood-soaked new American nation.

Night is one of the first and one of the greatest Holocaust memoirs. The new Folio Society edition is illustrated with art by survivors and witnesses and is published alongside Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Max Hastings’ history of Bomber Command, now in a new Folio edition, illuminates this controversial aspect of the Second World War through contemporary photographs and first-hand interviews.

A lavishly illustrated 20th anniversary edition of Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of how and why Eurasians developed the weapons, diseases and technologies that enabled them to dominate the rest of the world.

Jan Morris’s exuberant and witty love letter to the Manhattan of 1945 effortlessly evokes a time when it was ‘the most hopeful city on earth’.

Angie Debo’s comprehensive and compassionate account provides an unrivalled history of American Indians from the dawn of their first contact with Europeans to the late 20th century.

The thrilling true story of the largest British-led mass-escape of the Second World War.

Paul Brickhill’s account of 617 Squadron’s legendary bombing raid is an exhilarating read, showcased in a suitably dramatic red and black binding.

Utilising the stories of the men and women caught up in a period of extraordinary change, H. W. Brands has created an epic portrait of the Gold Rush, illustrated in this edition with rare contemporary photography.