Books written by Clive Ponting

  • Gunpowder
    Gunpowder

    The formula for gunpowder was discovered in China in 800 AD. Known as 'fire-drug', its origin was the alchemists' search for an immortality elixir, and it was initially a medicine...

  • A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
    A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations

    Clive Ponting's bestselling study of man's despoliation of the planet - now completely revised and updated. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Clive Ponting's book studies the relationship...

  • Whitehall: Tragedy and Farce
    Whitehall: Tragedy and Farce

    Whitehall: Tragedy and Farce

  • 1940: Myth and Reality
    1940: Myth and Reality

    Britain's Finest Hour revealed as a muddle of ineptitude and propaganda. Thoroughly researched and well written, Clive Ponting's book stands just about every preconceived notion concerning Britain's role in World...

  • Thirteen Days
    Thirteen Days

    Thirteen Days

  • World History: A New Perspective
    World History: A New Perspective

    This book starts from the assumption that the human story has to be seen in the round, examining the evolution of humans, their lives as hunters and gatherers and their eventual adoption of agriculture, before looking at the emergence of ...

  • The Crimean War
    The Crimean War

    With his sharp eye and analytical mind, Clive Ponting explodes many of the romantic myths which grew up in the years following the Crimean War, while telling the true story...

  • The Pimlico History of the Twentieth Century
    The Pimlico History of the Twentieth Century

    Arranged thematically, this is an ambitious, provocative and challenging interpretation of twentieth-century history, combining a global sweep with an eye for detail and individual experiences.

  • Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century
    Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century

    Progress and Barbarism is a provocative and challenging interpretation of twentieth-century history, combining a global sweep and an eye for detail and individual experiences.

  • World History: A New Perspective
    World History: A New Perspective

    Conventional accounts of world history tend to focus on the rise of Western civilisation and concentrate on the story of ancient Greece, the Roman empire and the expansion of Europe.

  • Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century
    Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century

    How has the world changed in the last century? This text looks back across 100 years of turbulence, Clive Ponting providing a reassessment of what the 20th century has meant...