ROBERT COLE

While most financial and investment advice focuses on recent trends, or encourages consumers to buy a favoured product, this book breaks the mould, offering eternal wisdom that draws on years of expensive failures and enviable successes. Following on from the success of James Skakoon's The Unwritten Laws of Business (25,000 copies sold to date), this approachable but thoughtful gem brings together these useful lessons for the first time. Covering everything from reminders of the simplest of truths - 'Patience is a virtue' and 'Better safe than sorry' - to the more troublesome - 'Inflation is the stealthiest of enemies' and 'Guarantees are rarely guaranteed' - each law is presented in an accessible, easily digestible manner, and illustrated with examples. This is essential reading for savers and investors, novices and old hands - and these laws are applicable all around the world.

The Traveller's History series is designed for the traveller who feels they need more historical background information on the country in which they are staying than can be found in an ordinary guidebook. For those who want to look deeper and discover more about the roots of France, its history and culture, in an enjoyable read, this is the book to choose. Designed for easy reference it is the key to unlocking the secrets of France. If you want to find about the mysterious Merovingian kings or the results of the last election; if you want to know when Chartres cathedral was built or how Napoleon rose to power or when and where Princess Diana died - you'll find it all in A Traveller's History of France. 'Undoubtedly the best way to prepare for a trip to France is to bone up on some history. The Traveller's History of France by Robert Cole is concise and gives the essential facts in a very readable form.' The Independent 'This little book is a very good idea indeed, a running commentary on the complexities, triumphs and tragedies of French history from the Lascaux Caves to the Pompidou centre. A must for tourists who want to know what happened where.' The Birmingham Post 'A brilliant idea from Gloucestershire publishers Windrush: a series of books which give a potted history of European countries. Ostensibly aimed at holidaymakers, the first on France, is an excellent introduction for anyone who wants an idiot's guide to a history that has so often intertwined with our own.'

"A Traveller's History of Germany" offers a complete and authoritative history of a country of which much of its rich past and legacy of great culture has been forgotten after the traumas of the two world wars. There were Germans long before there was Germany. Germanic peoples lived for centuries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe with similar yet not identical languages and culture. Over time these developed into regional principalities and city states under the nominal rule of first the Roman Empire, then the Holy Roman Empire, and finally the Habsburg Empire. German unification did not come until 1871 under Bismarck. Germany became a world power, fuelled not only by industrialisation but also by a new ideology of nationalism, a power that took on the rest of the world twice in the twentieth century and lost. Since 1945 it has risen from the ashes to become a major force - of a more palatable kind - within Europe.