Showing titles in 20th Century

From Max Hastings comes a collection of talks and lectures exploring the wars of the 20th century with the verve, insight and originality that has made him a number one bestselling historian. What is war like to live through, for civilian victims, especially women, as well as soldiers, sailors...

Who were the three men the Soviet and American superpowers exchanged on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge on February 10, 1962? Bridge of Spies is the true story of those men - Rudolf Abel, a Soviet Spy who was a master of disguise; Gary Powers, an American who was captured when his spy plane was shot down; and Frederic Pryor, a young American doctor mistakenly identified as a spy. They had been drawn into the nadir of the Cold War by duty and curiosity, rescued against daunting odds by fate and by their families, and then all but forgotten.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron...

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region.

The events of 1950-1999 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the Festival of Britain in 1951 through to the dawn of a new millennium at the end of 1999. In between are the eras of the Angry Young Men, the Teddy Boys and the Punk Rockers; the arrival of rock and roll and the permissive society; the advent of industrial strife in England and sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland; the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher; the miners' strike, three-day week and Winter of Discontent; the Queen's Silver Jubilee....

Wallis in Love brings a fascinating new perspective on the 20th century's most controversial royal scandal. Andrew Morton's impeccable research and unerring skill for riveting storytelling combine to present a strong case for a new and startling reveal: that the woman who rocked the world with her uncompromising passion for the Prince of Wales may have fooled everyone by keeping the object of her true passion hidden away....

From the bestselling author Simon Winchester, a human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it back. In 1889, thousands of hopeful people raced southward from the Kansas state line and westward from the Arkansas boundary to...

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

In this engaging narrative, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War—the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan—Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. 

In the summer of 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family arrived at Auschwitz. Within 30 minutes, they were separated. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers while Eva and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man who became known as the Angel of Death: Dr Josef Mengele. They were 10 years old. While twins at Auschwitz were granted the 'privileges' of keeping their own clothes and hair, they were also subjected to Mengele's sadistic medical experiments. 

The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain. In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the 20th century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events.

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days.

The Lion and The Dragon reveals the part that Britain played in the awakening of China, then covers relations between the two countries during the period when an aroused China did indeed shake the world. Lawrence James also follows the parallel trajectories of four competitive empires - the British, the Chinese, the Russian and the Japanese - during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and then the fortunes of a fifth imperial power, the United States.

Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle were thrown together by the challenges of war. They incarnated the resistance of Britain and France to the existential threat from Nazi Germany, and their ultimate victory over Hitler has ensured their achievements will never be forgotten. But, as The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle shows, that is only a small part of a complex story. Both men influenced their countries, and the world around them, long after the war was won.

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as 'the most important artist working today' by the Financial Times and as 'an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom' by the New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. 

Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realizing what this entailed. 

The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them. Most people are familiar with the basics of the Cuban Revolution of 1956–1959: it was led by two of the twentieth century’s most charismatic figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara...

Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers -- including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of...

In 1922, Major Herbert Armstrong, a Hay-on-Wye solicitor, was found guilty of, and executed for, poisoning his wife, Katharine, with arsenic. Armstrong's case has all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, from a plot by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers (indeed some aspects of his story appear in Sayers' Unnatural Death). It is a near-perfect whodunnit.