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National Book Award Winner: The definitive account of Nazi Germany and “one of the most important works of history of our time” ( The New York Times ).   When the Third Reich fell, it fell swiftly. The Nazis had little time to destroy their memos, their letters, or their diaries. William L. Shirer’s sweeping account of the Third Reich uses these unique sources, combined with his experience living in Germany as an international correspondent throughout the war.   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich earned Shirer a National Book Award and continues to be recognized as one of the most important and authoritative books about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany ever written. The diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, as well as evidence and other testimony gained at the Nuremberg Trials, could not have found more artful hands.   Shirer gives a clear, detailed, and well-documented account of how it was that Adolf Hitler almost succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a chilling and illuminating portrait of mankind’s darkest hours.   “A monumental work.” —Theodore H. White |
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Very few British soldiers could lay claim to such a full war as Leslie Young. Having survived the retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk, he volunteered for the newly formed Commandos and took part in their first operation, the raid on the Lofoten Islands. He fought and was captured in Tunisia. He went on the run before his POW camp at Fontanellato was taken over by the Nazis after the September 1943 Italian armistice. He spent six months on the run in the Apennine mountains aided by brave and selfless Italians. Many of whom were actively fighting their occupiers. He eventually reached Allied lines but not before several of his companions were tragically killed by both German and American fire. On return to England he immediately signed up for the invasion of North West Europe and despite being wounded eventually fought through to Germany. It is thanks to his son’s research that Major Young’s story can now be told. It is an inspiring and thrilling account which demands to be read. |
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“Brilliantly written, vivid, a powerful and often uncomfortable true story that deserves to be read and remembered. It beautifully captures the strength of the bond between a father and son.”--Heather Morris, author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz The #1 Sunday Times bestseller—a remarkable story of the heroic and unbreakable bond between a father and son that is as inspirational as The Tattooist of Auschwitz and as mesmerizing as The Choice. Where there is family, there is hope In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholster from Vienna, and his sixteen-year-old son Fritz are arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Germany. Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis’ murderous brutality. Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz—and certain death. For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow.  Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future.  Based on the secret diary that Gustav kept as well as meticulous archival research and interviews with members of the Kleinmann family, including Fritz’s younger brother Kurt, sent to the United States at age eleven to escape the war, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is Gustav and Fritz’s story—an extraordinary account of courage, loyalty, survival, and love that is unforgettable. |
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A witty and concise look at the beginnings of English history, when the nation consolidated after clashes between the Saxons and invading Vikings. In 871, three of England's four kingdoms were overrun by Vikings, the ruthless, all-conquering Scandinavian raiders who terrorized early medieval Europe. With the Norsemen murdering one king with arrows and torturing another to death by ripping out his lungs, the prospects that faced the kingdom of Wessex were bleak. Worse still, the Saxons were now led by a young man barely out of his teens who was more interested in God than fighting. Yet within a decade Alfred—the only English king known as the Great—had driven the Vikings out of half of England, and his children and grandchildren would unite the country a few years later. This period, popular with fans of television shows such as Vikings and The Last Kingdom , saw the creation of England as a nation-state, with Alfred laying down the first national law code, establishing an education system and building cities. Saxons vs. Vikings also covers the period before Alfred, including ancient Britain, the Roman occupation, and the Dark Ages, explaining important historical episodes such as Boudicca, King Arthur, and Beowulf. Perfect for newcomers to the subject, this is the second title in the new A Very, Very Short History of England series. If you’re trying to understand England and its history in the most informative and entertaining way possible, this is the place to start. |
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From bestselling and award-winning war reporter Damien Lewis and for fans of Erik Larsen’s The Splendid and Vile and Alex Kershaw’s The Forgotten 500 comes a thrilling account of one of the most daring raids of WWII…the true story of the race to stop Hitler from developing a top-secret weapon that would change the course of history.   "One of the most readable World War 2 history books I have read in years” — We Are the Mighty In the winter of 1941, as Britain faced defeat on all fronts, an RAF reconnaissance pilot photographed an alien-looking object on the French coast near Le Havre. The mysterious device—a “Wurzburg Dish”—appeared to be a new form of radar technology: ultra-compact, highly precise, and pointed directly across the English Channel. Britain’s experts found it hard to believe the Germans had mastered such groundbreaking technology. But one young technician thought it not only possible, he convinced Winston Churchill that the dish posed a unique and deadly threat to Allied forces, one that required desperate measures—and drastic action . . .   Capturing the radar on film had been an amazing coup. Stealing it away from under the noses of the Nazis would be remarkable.    So was launched Operation Biting, a mission like no other. An extraordinary “snatch-and-grab” raid on Germany’s secret radar installation, it offered Churchill’s elite airborne force, the Special Air Service, a rare opportunity to redeem themselves after a previous failed mission—and to shift the tides of war forever. Led by the legendary Major John Frost, these brave paratroopers would risk all in a daring airborne assault, with only a small stretch of beach menaced by enemy guns as their exit point. With the help of a volunteer radar technician who knew how to dismantle the dish, as well as the courageous men and women of the French Resistance, they succeeded against all odds in their act of brazen robbery. Some would die. Others would be captured. All fought with resolute bravery . . .   This is the story of that fateful night of February 27, 1942. A brilliantly told, thrillingly tense account of Churchill’s raiders in their finest hour, this is World War II history at its heart-stopping best.   “This highly informative book almost reads like a genuine techno-thriller." — New York Journal of Books   “A little-known behind-the-lines spectacular led by two heroic British officers.” — Kirkus Reviews   “Anyone who wants to learn more about the origins of the British Special Forces should read this book.  It intertwines historical research and eyewitness testimony to tell the untold story of heroism, courage, and ingenuity.” — Military Press   “Lewis presents a richly detailed and nail-biting tale.”  — Library Journal |
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Destined to become a modern classic in the vein of Guns, Germs, and Steel , Sapiens is a lively, groundbreaking history of humankind told from a unique perspective.      100,000 years ago, at least six species of human inhabited the earth. Today there is just one.      Us. Homo Sapiens .      How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?      In Sapiens , Dr. Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical -- and sometimes devastating -- breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology, and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?      Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power...and our future. |
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"Absolutely perfect for the current moment." --Buzzfeed America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable. |
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#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.” —Bill Gates, GatesNotes.com "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."— Chicago Tribune  The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic.  Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research,  The Great Influenza  provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."    At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. |
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Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.     A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.     Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror. |
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The Epic New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Texas Book Award Winner of the Oklahoma Book Award This stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” ( The New York Times Book Review ). Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads, and the amazing story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Hailed by critics, S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history. |
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“Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed . He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom Hanks NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER In The Wall Street Journal , Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War . Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation. An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division—3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic. Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill—and came to love—his fellow man. “In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge’s. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it actually was like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals’ safe accounts of—not the ‘good war’—but the worst war ever.”—Ken Burns |
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A companion to Oliver Stone’s ten-part Showtime documentary series in the tradition of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States , this cutting-edge and provocative book challenges the status quo of American history. Multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone (once called “Dostoevsky behind a camera”) has directed such iconic movies as Platoon , Wall Street , JFK , Natural Born Killers , and W and is known for his often controversial point of view and probing exploration of weighty historical and political topics. Now, Stone collaborates with esteemed American University professor Peter Kuznick to present our country’s “secret history,” one that has been unearthed through recently discovered archives and newly declassified material. Filled with poignant photos and little-known historical facts, this book covers the rise of the American Empire and national security state from the late nineteenth century through the Obama administration, revealing how deeply rooted the seemingly aberrant policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are in the nation’s past—and why it has proven so difficult for President Obama to significantly change course. By discerning patterns that have previously gone unrecognized and examining the most recently released classified documents, Stone and Kuznick challenge prevailing orthodoxies and ask questions not normally raised. The result is not the kind of history taught in schools or represented on television or in popular movies, and it will come as a surprise to the vast majority of American and global citizens, shocking and astounding both experts and history-lovers alike. |
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Here is a gripping account of the major postwar trial of the Nazi hierarchy in World War II. The Nuremberg Trial brilliantly recreates the trial proceedings and offers a reasoned, often profound examination of the processes that created international law. From the whimpering of Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop on the stand to the icy coolness of Goering, each participant is vividly drawn. Includes twenty-four photographs of the key players as well as extensive references, sources, biographies, and an index. |
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The horrifying true story of one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz  Growing up in New York, Marilyn Shimon often visited her uncle in California. She saw his scars, gaped at his 31321 tattoo, and listened to his horrific stories of surviving the Holocaust. However, she could not relate to the suffering he endured or understand the significance of his accounts – until now. In this grisly memoir, Marilyn resurrects Murray Scheinberg’s stories of six hellish years in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The Polish Jew was one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz, as a political prisoner in 1940, and one of the last to escape Dachau. Shockingly frank and truly harrowing, this is a gripping first-hand account of the horror and degradation of the camps, from the first day to the very last.  "It is both an uplifting tale and a sorry one about human nature in the face of evil." Abraham H. Foxman, National Director Emeritus, Anti-Defamation League |
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When in August, 1944, the Allies broke out of Normandy, the world's attention became fixed on the dramatic British and American armoured thrusts into the Rhine. The war in Europe seemed all but over. Far to the left, along the flank of the Allied Expeditionary Force, almost unnoticed, a battle was beginning on whose outcome hung not only victory but the possibility of disaster Under-strength, neglected by Montogomery and denied by Eisenhower the supposed which he had promised, First Canadian Army paid an appalling price in casualties to clear the Channel coast and open up the great port of Antwerp. Commanded by General Harry Crerar , the army contained not only Canadians, but, for most of the campaign, more British troops then the Eighth Army at Alamein. Poles, Americans, Dutch, Belgians, Czechs and French served in it and were partnered in all their operations by the equally international No.84 Group, RAF. Their hard-won success in clearing the banks of the Scheldt and in capturing Walcheren Island was followed four months later by victory in the Rhineland. There, with almost every one of Montgomery's British Divisions under command, they smashed the best of what remained of the German Army and, with it, Hitler's last hope of defending the Rhine. The way was open for the Allies into the heart of the Reich. In the war's final phase, most of Crerar's British divisions were replaced with by Canadian formations newly arrived from their arduous campaign in Italy. Striking north and west after crossing the Rhine, they liberated Holland and drove east-ward into the heavily defended area of Germany. At war's end they had reached the Weser and were closing on the great naval bases of Emden and Wilhemshaven. Jeffery Williams won wide acclaim for his definitive biography Viscount Byng of Vimy. He brings the same assured touch to this lively and fast-moving account of a crucial aspect of the battle for North-West Europe which has hitherto been largely neglected by historians. |
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This is the untold story of the Russian Revolution: its antecedents, its far-reaching changes, its betrayal by Bolshevik terror, and the massive resistance of non-Bolshevik revolutionaries. This in-depth, eyewitness history written by Voline, an outspoken activist in the Russian Revolution, contains a biography of the author by Rudolf Rocker and a contemporary introduction from anarchist historian Iain McKay Significant attention is given to what the author describes as "struggles for the real Social Revolution"; that is, the uprising of the sailors and workers of Kronstadt in 1921, and the peasant movement that Nestor Makhno led in the Ukraine. These movements, which sought to defend the social revolution from destruction by the politicians, provide important material for a clearer understanding of both the original objectives of the Russian Revolution and the problems with which all revolutions with far-reaching social objectives have to contend. Of particular interest to the student of the Russian revolution are the chapters of personal experiences and those in which the author, drawing on the revolutionary press of the time, reveals the deep cleavage between the objectives of the Libertarians and those of the Bolsheviks, differences which the latter "resolved" by ruthlessly eliminating all those who stood in their way in the struggle for power. This edition is a translation of the full text of La Révolution inconnue, first published in 1947. It reinstates material omitted from earlier English-language editions and reproduces the complete text of the original volumes. Voline, writer, educator, and poet, was exiled by the Tsarist tribunal and ordered by Trotsky to be executed but was rescued by protests. He never ceased to live up to his chosen nom de guerre, based on the Russian word for freedom. |
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Paphos Publishers offers a wide catalog of rare classic titles, published for a new generation.  The Growth of the British Empire is a succinct history of Britain's rise to power. |
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First published in 1880.According to Wikipedia: "The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Following Lord Carnarvon's successful introduction of federation in Canada, it was thought that similar political effort, coupled with military campaigns, might succeed with the African kingdoms, tribal areas and Boer republics in South Africa. In 1874, Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sent to South Africa as High Commissioner for the British Empire to bring such plans into being. Among the obstacles were the presence of the independent states of the South African Republic and the Kingdom of Zululand and its army.[6] Frere, on his own initiative, without the approval of the British government[7][8] and with the intent of instigating a war with the Zulu, had presented an ultimatum on 11 December 1878, to the Zulu king Cetshwayo with which the Zulu king could not comply.[9] Cetshwayo did not comply and Bartle Frere sent Lord Chelmsford to invade Zululand.[10] The war is notable for several particularly bloody battles, including a stunning opening victory by the Zulu at Isandlwana, as well as for being a landmark in the timeline of imperialism in the region. The war eventually resulted in a British victory and the end of the Zulu nation's independence." |
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“Freeman’s rich and ambitious Behemoth depicts a world in retreat that still looms large in the national imagination.… More than an economic history, or a chronicle of architectural feats and labor movements.”—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now. |
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THE SEARCH…THE CAPTURE…AND THE TRIAL OF HISTORY’S BLOODIEST MURDERER, ADOLF EICHMANN — BY THE MAN WHO TRACKED HIM DOWN Tuviah Friedman-The Hunter of Adolf Eichmann Here is the extraordinary story of the famous hunter who spent fifteen years searching for Adolf Eichmann, one of the most ruthless criminals the world has known. When the first Soviet troops entered Poland, young Tuviah Friedman, who had lost most of his family and seen many of his friends beaten to death, knew his chance to revenge himself on the Nazis was at hand. After his escape from a concentration camp, Friedman joined Polish security force charged with rounding up former commandants of slave labor and ghettos, and became a precocious and highly successful Nazi hunter. Had he not encountered anti-Semitic prejudices among the Poles, he might have remained in Poland and entered the new government that was then being formed. Instead, he proceeded to Vienna where he began his fifteen years search for Eichmann—a search whose final chapter began to unfold in October, 1959. The rest is history. Tuviah Friedman’s story is the authentic account of the search for Adolf Eichmann. Friedman has documents, never known to exist, and has witnessed and participated in the crucial events of this story. “An enthralling detective story and a self-portrayal of one man’s terrifying obsession.”—Life Magazine “Eccentric? Fanatic? Dedicated Man? He is all three but his book is a fascinating one…”—The New York Times |
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From the outbreak of war in September 1939 all the way to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day, Nijmegen and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War. The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, Stanley Christopher’s regiment, went to war as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army. Their journey through the war, learning through mistakes and tragedy as well as from a determined desire to improve, can, in many ways, be seen to reflect the experience of the British Army as a whole. From Alamein onwards, the Sherwood Rangers were in the vanguard of almost every action in which they took part, and over the course of the conflict, they amassed an astonishing thirty battle honours. Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. He took part in all thirty battle honours, and collected a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses and an American Silver Star, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches four times. His is an extraordinary story. |
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In 1940, Alan Moorehead was sent to cover the North Africa campaign by the Daily Express, and he followed its dramatic course all the way to 1943. The three books he subsequently wrote about the Desert War – later collected as his ‘ African Trilogy’ – were swiftly acclaimed as a classic account of the tussle between Montgomery’ s Eighth Army and Rommel’ s Afrika Corps, amidst the endless harsh wastes of the Western Desert. Moorehead was responsible for the celebrated insight that tank battles in the desert are like battles at sea, the lumbering tanks like ships lost in a vast ocean of sand. The New Statesman could not have put it better when it described his achievement with this riveting book: ‘ There is something of genius in the breadth and penetration of his vision, which encompasses the whole panorama of war and then narrows it down to the particular: the soldier stubbing out his cigarette before going into action, the expression on a tank commander’ s face as he is hit… The story of the African campaigns will go down in history as one of the great epics of mankind, largely thanks to Mr Moorehead’ s account.’ |
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From the author of A People's Tragedy , an original reading of the Russian Revolution, examining it not as a single event but as a hundred-year cycle of violence in pursuit of utopian dreams In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the communist Soviet regime in 1991. Figes traces three generational phases: Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who set the pattern of destruction and renewal until their demise in the terror of the 1930s; the Stalinist generation, promoted from the lower classes, who created the lasting structures of the Soviet regime and consolidated its legitimacy through victory in war; and the generation of 1956, shaped by the revelations of Stalin's crimes and committed to "making the Revolution work" to remedy economic decline and mass disaffection. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun. With the authority and distinctive style that have marked his magisterial histories, Figes delivers an accessible and paradigm-shifting reconsideration of one of the defining events of the twentieth century. |
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The astonishing story of how the British codebreakers of Bletchley Park cracked the Nazi Enigma cyphers, cutting an estimated two years off the Second World War, never ceases to amaze. No one is better placed to tell that story than Michael Smith, whose number one bestseller Station X was one of the earliest accounts. Using recently released secret files, along with personal interviews with many of the codebreakers themselves, Smith now provides the definitive account of everything that happened at Bletchley Park during the war, from breaking the German, Italian and Japanese codes to creating the world’s first electronic computer. The familiar picture of Bletchley Park is of eccentric elderly professors breaking German codes, but in fact the vast majority of people who worked at Bletchley Park were young women. For them and for the young graduates plucked from Britain’s best universities who did the bulk of the day-to-day codebreaking, this was truly the time of their lives. The Secrets of Station X tells their story in full, providing an enthralling account of one of the most remarkable British success stories of all time. |
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A concise survey of the culture and civilization of mankind, The Lessons of History is the result of a lifetime of research from Pulitzer Prize–winning historians Will and Ariel Durant. With their accessible compendium of philosophy and social progress, the Durants take us on a journey through history, exploring the possibilities and limitations of humanity over time. Juxtaposing the great lives, ideas, and accomplishments with cycles of war and conquest, the Durants reveal the towering themes of history and give meaning to our own. |
