UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · HISTORY · BIOGRAPHY
Simon Schama
Also known as: Simon. Schama, Schama Simon
Sir Simon Michael Schama ( SHAH-mə; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. As of January 2026 he is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000–2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of the Jews (2013).
'Twas the darkness that did the trick, black as tar, that and the silence, though how the men contriv'd to clamber their way up the cliff with their musket and seventy rounds on their backs, I'm sure I don't know even though I saw it with my own eyes and did it myself before very long.
— from Dead certainties, 1991
Most acclaimed
Patriots and liberators
1977
"A tour de force, the first work of a young English scholar that is already attracting the highest acclaim..., Patriots and Liberators captures the disintegration of a great European power--the Dutch Republic--into military impotence, economic ruin and near terminal eclipse as a nation state. Drawing on a mass of previously untouched archival material from several countries, Simon Schama gives us a brilliant portrait of an extraordinary nation at the point of no return. The moment is the ominous pause before the political cataclysm that will engulf the Old World in 1789. ... For more than a hundred years, the Dutch have been admired and envied as the miracle of a continent: affluent, urbane and tolerant, the masters of a global maritime empire, providers of Europe's ships, grain, cloth and spices, bankers to its monarchs, pioneers in science and printing, they have placed their stamp upon Western civilisation. But now their splendour is decaying, their Golden Century at an end.^ As grandeur sinks towards catastrophe (an incapable ruler, chaos in government, famine and poverty spreading across the land, an army and fleet pathetically inadequate to safeguard the Republic's independence), we see a people in extremis: they must either resign themselves to the total erosion of their power or else embark--deliberately--upon their own revolution. They choose the second course (three years before revolution erupts in France), but the brave attempt at regeneration--their enterprise: to create a democracy of citizens in arms--ends in disaster. Schama's book graphically documents the succession of calamities--civil war, invasion, occupation, economic strangulation and political sabotage--that befalls the Dutch from this moment on in their desperate efforts to avert obliteration as an independent state.^ Attacked by greedy enemies on all sides (first Prussia, then Britain, then Napoleonic France exporting "Liberty" and revolutionary imperialism on the points of bayonets), the country is tom apart. Livelihoods are ruined, crops destroyed; the fishermen of the deltas are driven to destitution by hostile privateers; beggars and academics in Leiden are caught up in a gunpowder explosion that rips their city apart; all across the land, people are subjected to financial extortion as agents and spies, generals and ambassadors, conspire to wreck the government and exploit every weakness to satisfy the limitless demands of the French war machine. Even Louis Bonaparte, installed by his brother as puppet king of the Dutch, joins his "subjects" in their concerted resistance; ultimately, he will contemplate breaking the dykes that protect his people from the seas and flooding the country rather than surrender. Patriots and Liberators is the anatomy of a satellite state in a time of total war.^ How the Dutch miraculously survived is the drama of this monumental, driving book, whose revelations mark a major contribution to our understanding of the shaping of modern Europe."--Dust jacket.
Dead certainties
1991
An experiment in historical narration: two true "tales"--Each involving a violent death, each linked to a great, tragic Boston dynasty, that of General James Wolfe, killed at the battle of Quebec in 1759 and the second, the death of George Parkman, eccentric Boston luminary. Both tales are linked by the fate of the dynasty of the Parkmans of Boston and by Schama's sense of the irrecoverable distance between events and their narration, of the death of certainty--Jacket.
Citizens
Citizens is a new kind of science fiction anthology.The names appearing between its covers are not only veteran authors, among the very best in the field, they are military veterans as well. New York Times best-selling author John Ringo (a veteran of the 82nd Airborne) and Brian M Thomasen, a Hugo finalist and one of the most respected editors in the field, have selected a treasure trove of gems written by writers who know first hand what it means to wear their country's uniform.nbsp;Among the top writers appearing in Citizens are Issac Asimov, Robert A Heilein, Arthur C. Clarke, Elizabeth Moon, Gordon R. Dickson, David Drake, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Keith Laumer, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Gene Wolfe and more, nearly all authors of best sellers, and recipients of Hugo and Nebula awards. Citizens will have strong appeal to readers of military science fiction,as well as more general readers.