Книги

'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep.

Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever before.

In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent Deep provides an essential historical perspective.

'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's…

In Rana Mitter's tense, moving and hugely important book, the war between China and Japan - one of the most important struggles of the Second World War - at last gets the masterly history it deserves

Different countries give different opening dates for the period of the Second World War, but perhaps the most compelling is 1937, when the 'Marco Polo Bridge Incident' plunged China and Japan into a conflict of extraordinary duration and ferocity - a war which would result in many millions of deaths and completely reshape East Asia in ways which we continue to confront today.

With great vividness and narrative drive Rana Mitter's new book draws on a huge range of new sources to recreate this terrible conflict. He writes both about the major leaders (Chiang Kaishek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei) and about the ordinary people swept up by terrible times. Mitter puts at the heart of our understanding of the Second World War that it was Japan's failure to defeat China which was the key dynamic for what happened in Asia.

In Rana Mitter's tense, moving and hugely important book, the war between China and Japan - one of the most important struggles of the Second World War - at last gets the masterly…

Всемирно известный историк, профессор Оксфордского университета Маргарет Макмиллан исследует причины развязывания Первой мировой войны, последовавшей после длительного периода мира в Европе, который, казалось, и впредь сулил ей процветание и прогресс. Автор рассматривает основные политические и технологические преобразования Европы за годы, предшествующие войне, то есть с конца XIX в. до августа 1914 г., когда был убит эрцгерцог Франц-Фердинанд. Анализируя идеи, чувства и решения, которые, выйдя из-под контроля, нарушили равновесие и привели Европу к катастрофе, Макмиллан дает яркое, образное описание участников событий и анализ мотивов их действий. Книга Маргарет Макмиллан - блистательное исследование и наиболее полный отчет о последних годах старой Европы.

Всемирно известный историк, профессор Оксфордского университета Маргарет Макмиллан исследует причины развязывания Первой мировой войны, последовавшей после длительного периода…

Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a single crew struggled to prevent the explosion of the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States, with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view.

Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a single crew struggled to prevent the explosion of the most…

For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe. Only at sea was British power dominant, though even with this crucial advantage the British population lived under fear of a French invasion for much of those two decades. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and eventually won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower?

This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which the capacities of the whole British population were involved: industrialists, farmers, shipbuilders, cannon founders, gunsmiths and gunpowder manufacturers all had continually to increase quality and output as the demands of the war remorselessly grew. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, he argues, than the bankers and international traders of the City of London, who played a critical role in financing the wars and without whom the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field.

The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole.

For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe. Only at sea was British power dominant, though even with this crucial advantage the…

The ultimate history of the Allied bombing campaigns in World War II

Technology shapes the nature of all wars, and the Second World War hinged on a most unpredictable weapon: the bomb. Day and night, Britain and the United States unleashed massive fleets of bombers to kill and terrorize occupied Europe, destroying its cities. The grisly consequences call into question how “moral” a war the Allies fought.

The Bombers and the Bombed radically overhauls our understanding of World War II. It pairs the story of the civilian front line in the Allied air war alongside the political context that shaped their strategic bombing campaigns, examining the responses to bombing and being bombed with renewed clarity.

The first book to examine seriously not only the well-known attacks on Dresden and Hamburg but also the significance of the firebombing on other fronts, including Italy, where the crisis was far more severe than anything experienced in Germany, this is Richard Overy’s finest work yet. It is a rich reminder of the terrible military, technological, and ethical issues that relentlessly drove all the war’s participants into an abyss.

The ultimate history of the Allied bombing campaigns in World War II

Technology shapes the nature of all wars, and the Second World War hinged on a most unpredictable weapon:…

In "Strategy: A History", Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.
The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in "The Iliad", the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment - subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends - provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point.
A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

In "Strategy: A History", Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a…

В этой книге известная американская журналистка и политический аналитик исследует историю образования и начального периода эволюции коммунистических режимов в странах Восточной Европы после Второй мировой войны. Анализ событий главным образом в освобожденных Красной армией Венгрии, Восточной Германии и Польше сопровождается новыми материалами многочисленных архивов, свидетельствами очевидцев событий. Всесторонне реконструируются различные аспекты социально-политических и экономических процессов в странах социалистического лагеря, функционирования механизмов пропаганды и политического контроля всех сфер жизни общества, раскрывается роль спецслужб в подавлении оппозиции и общественных движений. Автор показывает, что догматическое воспроизводство местными коммунистами методов советского тоталитарного режима, а также сохранившиеся, несмотря ни на что, протестные настроения в обществе, логично привели к распаду «восточного блока», как только возник разлом в главной его опоре — Советском Союзе — и пал железный занавес.

В этой книге известная американская журналистка и политический аналитик исследует историю образования и начального периода эволюции коммунистических режимов в странах Восточной…

In the wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and in recent conflicts more generally, liberal powers have blurred the line between military and political activity. 'War From The Ground Up' offers a distinctive perspective in its consideration of the concept of contemporary warfare.

In the wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and in recent conflicts more generally, liberal powers have blurred the line between military and political activity. 'War From The Ground…

'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening', wrote Churchill. 'The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.in fact the War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of fate.'

In this major new history, one of Britain's foremost military historians and defence experts tackles the origins - and the opening first few weeks of fighting - of what would become known as 'the war to end all wars'. Intensely researched and convincingly argued, Allan Mallinson explores and explains the grand strategic shift that occurred in the century before the war, the British Army's regeneration after its drubbings in its fight against the Boer in South Africa, its almost calamitous experience of the first twenty days' fighting in Flanders to the point at which the British Expeditionary Force - the 'Old Contemptibles' - took up the pick and the spade in the middle of September 1914. For it was then that the war changed from one of rapid and brutal movement into the now familiar image of the trenches and the coming of the Territorials, Kitchener's 'Pals', and ultimately the conscripts - and of course the poets. And with them, that terrible sense of the pity and of the futility.

Mallinson brings his experience as a professional soldier to bear on the individuals, circumstances and events and the result is a vivid, compelling new history of the beginnings of the Great War that speculates - tantalizingly - on what might have been...

'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening', wrote Churchill. 'The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements…

In this paperback of his acclaimed and wide-ranging study. David Scott challenges traditional assumptions about how Britain achieved her global might Shortlisted for the Duke of. Westminster Medal for Military Literature 2013 Navigating the 300 years between the Tudor accession and the loss of the American colonies Leviathan charts one of history's greatest transformations: the rise of Britain as the world's most formidable maritime power From the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. . Henry VIII's split with Rome and Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentary regime. David Scott's masterly narrative explodes traditional assumptions to present a much darker interpretation of this extraordinary story. Powered by a rapidly growing navy. a rapacious merchant marine. resilient politics. bigotry and religious...

In this paperback of his acclaimed and wide-ranging study. David Scott challenges traditional assumptions about how Britain achieved her global might Shortlisted for the Duke of.…

A history of the project of world government, from the first post-Napoleonic visions of the brotherhood of man to the current crisis of global finance.

The Napoleonic Wars showed Europe what sort of damage warring states could do. But how could sovereign nations be made to share power and learn to look beyond their own narrow interests? The old monarchs had one idea. Mazzini and the partisans of nationalist democracy had another, and so did Marx and the radical Left.

It is an argument that has raged for two hundred years now, and Mark Mazower tells its history enthrallingly in Governing the World. With each era, the stakes have grown higher as the world has grown smaller and the potential rewards to cooperation and damage from conflict have increased.

As Mark Mazower shows us, each age’s dominant power has set the tune, and for nearly a century that tune has been sung in English. He begins with Napoleon’s defeat, in 1815, when England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed the Concert of Europe. Against this, there emerged many of the ideas that would shape the international institutions of the twentieth century–liberal nationalism, communism, the expertise of the scientist and the professional international lawyers. Mazower traces these ideas into the Great War through to the League of Nations. He explains how the League collapsed when confronted by the atrocities of the Third Reich, and how a more hard-nosed approach to international governance emerged in its wake.

The United Nations appeared in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and a war-fighting alliance led by Great Britain and the United States was ultimately what transformed into an international peacetime organization. Mazower examines the ideas that shaped the UN, the compromises and constraints imposed by the Cold War and its transformation in the high noon of decolonization. The 1970s ushered in a sea change in attitudes to international government through the emergence of a vision of globalized capitalism in the 1970s that marginalized the UN itself and utilized bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—the final acts of Anglo- American institution-building.

But the sun is setting on Anglo-American dominance of the world’s great international institutions. We are at the end of an era, Mazower explains, and we are passing into a new age of global power relations, a shift whose outcome is still very much in question.

A history of the project of world government, from the first post-Napoleonic visions of the brotherhood of man to the current crisis of global finance.

The Napoleonic Wars…

The Gallipoli campaign was launched in April 1915 in an effort to knock Turkey out of the war but the force that was deployed was too small to achieve its aim. Moreover, the commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton was at fault in the way he conducted his campaign. Never happier than when he was in the thick of action, Hamilton was an excellent tactician but, by 1915, and in a situation like Gallipoli, his style of leadership was outdated. This book examines why Hamilton failed at Gallipoli and shows how, in spite of that failure and it being his last command, he became a well-respected military prophet who many several perceptive predictions about the future of warfare.

The Gallipoli campaign was launched in April 1915 in an effort to knock Turkey out of the war but the force that was deployed was too small to achieve its aim. Moreover, the…

В Европе ВТОРАЯ МИРОВАЯ ВОЙНА британского военного историка Макса Хейстингса - самый известный и авторитетный однотомник об этой войне. В динамичном, захватывающем повествовании Хейстингс виртуозно сочетает масштабность видения с выразительностью деталей.
На гигантском полотне отчетливо и ярко различимы подробности сражений и экономики воюющих стран, логистика снабжения армий, политические портреты и зарисовки во французском Генеральном штабе, в Белом доме, в Министерстве по делам колоний или в ставке Сталина. Подлинные жемчужины книги - личные документы, письма, дневники, воспоминания самых разных людей - от простых солдат до известных писателей, таких как Василий Гроссман, Илья Эренбург.
В соединении памяти людей и документов перед нами предстает страшная и убедительная история самой чудовищной войны в человеческой истории.
-
- Цитата
"Несомненно, это лучший однотомник, посвященный истории войны, из когда-либо написанных".
The Sunday Times

"Один из лучших военных историков столетия".
Колин Гардинер, Oxford Times

"Он был рожден, чтобы написать эту книгу".
Sunday Times

"Хейстингсу удалось создать удивительный сплав из берущих за душу личных воспоминаний и общего курса военной истории".
Хью Строн, Thе Times

О чем книга
ВТОРАЯ МИРОВАЯ ВОЙНА. АД НА ЗЕМЛЕ по праву считается лучшей книгой автора и лучшим однотомником о Второй мировой войне. Более 35 лет своей жизни Хейстингс посвятил Второй мировой войне, считая ее одним из самых страшных человеческой истории.
В динамичном, захватывающем повествовании Хейстингс виртуозно сочетает масштабность видения с выразительностью деталей. На гигантском полотне отчетливо и ярко различимы подробности сражений и экономики воюющих стран, логистика снабжения армий, политические портреты и зарисовки во французском Генеральном штабе, в Белом доме, в Министерстве по делам колоний или в ставке Сталина. Подлинные жемчужины книги - личные документы, письма, дневники, воспоминания самых разных людей - от простых солдат до известных писателей, таких как Василий Гроссман, Илья Эренбург. В соединении памяти людей и документов перед нами предстает страшная и убедительная история самой чудовищной войны в человеческой истории.

Почему книга достойна прочтения
- Каждая книга крупного историка и писателя сэра Макса Хейстингса становится событием.
- Автор известен скрупулезным подходом к исследованиям, использованием огромного количества источников и прекрасным стилем.
- Писатель дает масштабную панораму и одновременно тщательно воспроизводит все детали гигантского полотна, от вторжения в Польшу до капитуляции Японии.
- Более 35 лет автор посвятил изучению Второй Мировой войны.

Кто автор
Макс Хейстингс - известный британский военный историк с многолетним опытом военного репортера (он начинал еще во Вьетнаме), автор 24 книг. В течение десяти лет был главным редактором The Daily Telegraph. Лауреат многочисленных журналистских премий.

Ключевые понятия
Вторая мировая война, мировая история, военная история, история России.

В Европе ВТОРАЯ МИРОВАЯ ВОЙНА британского военного историка Макса Хейстингса - самый известный и авторитетный однотомник об этой войне. В динамичном, захватывающем повествовании…

SPIES IN THE SKY is the thrilling, little known story of the partner organisation to the famous code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. It is the story of the daring reconnaissance pilots who took aerial photographs over Occupied Europe during the most dangerous days of the Second World War, and of the photo interpreters who invented a completely new science to analyse those pictures. They were inventive and ingenious; they pioneered the development of 3D photography and their work provided vital Intelligence throughout the war. With a whole host of larger than life characters at its heart, from the legendary pilot Adrian 'Warby' Warburton, who went missing while on a mission, to photo interpreters Glyn Daniel, later a famous television personality, and Winston Churchill's daughter, Sarah, SPIES IN THE SKY is compelling reading, and the first full account of the story of aerial photography and the Intelligence gleaned from it in nearly fifty years.

SPIES IN THE SKY is the thrilling, little known story of the partner organisation to the famous code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. It is the story of the daring…

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind.
In the late 1940s, George Kennan wrote two documents, the "Long Telegram" and the "X Article," which set forward the strategy of containment that would define U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades. This achievement alone would qualify him as the most influential American diplomat of the Cold War era. But he was also an architect of the Marshall Plan, a prizewinning historian, and would become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Now the full scope of Kennan's long life and vast influence is revealed by one of today's most important Cold War scholars.

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled…

The remains of General Francisco Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of twenty thousand slave laborers. His enemies, however, met less-exalted fates. Besides those killed on the battlefield, tens of thousands were officially executed between 1936 and 1945, and as many again became "non-persons." As Spain finally reclaims its historical memory, a full picture can now be given of the Spanish Holocaust-ranging from judicial murders to the abuse of women and children. The story of the victims of Franco's reign of terror is framed by the activities of four key men-General Mola, Quiepo de Llano, Major Vallejo Najera, and Captain Don Gonzalo Aguilera-whose dogma of eugenics, terrorization, domination, and mind control horrifyingly mirror the fascism of Italy and Germany.

Evoking such classics as Gulag and The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds crucial light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history.

The remains of General Francisco Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of twenty thousand slave laborers. His enemies, however, met…

‘Well written and persuasive …objective and well-rounded….this scholarly rehabilitation should be the standard biography’ **** Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday

‘A true judgment of him must lie somewhere between hero and zero, and in this detailed biography Gary Sheffield shows himself well qualified to make it … a balanced portrait’ Sunday Times

‘Solid scholarship and admirable advocacy’ Sunday Telegraph

Douglas Haig is the single most controversial general in British history. In 1918, after his armies had won the First World War, he was feted as a saviour. But within twenty years his reputation was in ruins, and it has never recovered. In this fascinating biography, Professor Gary Sheffield reassesses Haig’s reputation, assessing his critical role in preparing the army for war.

‘Well written and persuasive …objective and well-rounded….this scholarly rehabilitation should be the standard biography’ **** Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday

‘A true judgment…

This title is nominated for "Financial Times" History Book Of The Year and "Daily Telegraph" Books Of The Year. At the end of 1917 Britain and France faced a strategic nightmare. Their great offensives against Germany had been calamitous, leaving hundreds of thousands of young men dead and wounded for negligible territorial gains. Despite America's entry into the war the US army remained tiny, the Italian army had been routed, and Russia had dropped out of the conflict. The Central Powers now dominated Central and Eastern Europe, and Germany could move over forty divisions to the Western Front. Yet only one year later, on 11 November 1918, the fighting ended in a decisive Allied victory. In his new book David Stevenson retells the story of the final year of the First World War and, in a remarkable and fascinating piece of original research, goes to the roots of this dramatic reversal of fortune, analysing the reasons for Allied success and the collapse of Germany and its partners. Everything from food supply to finance, from strategy to technology, logistics, and morale, is explored in an assessment that lays bare the nerve-racking decisions taken on both sides and the sheer uncertainty faced by the leaders. Ironically Stevenson traces Germany's 1918 disaster to 'Operation Michael', the great spring offensive that tested the British army to the uttermost and led on to Field Marshal Haig's famous "With Our Backs to The Wall" order to his troops to fight to the last man. This is a rich and compelling study of a turning point in modern history. The consequences of the events of 1918 shaped the whole of the twentieth century - and still touch us today.

This title is nominated for "Financial Times" History Book Of The Year and "Daily Telegraph" Books Of The Year. At the end of 1917 Britain and France faced a strategic nightmare.…

В декабре 1979 года советские войска вошли в Афганистан, чтобы поддержать дружественный режим и уйти через полгода или год, однако благие намерения СССР обернулись долгой войной, имевшей катастрофические последствия не только для Афганистана, но и для самого Советского Союза, и всего мира.
Трезвая и точная книга сэра Родрика Брейтвейта? лучшее из опубликованных на английском языке описаний кампании 1979-1989 годов. Война предстает здесь не злодейством, а трагедией, не результатом заговора, а роковым стечением обстоятельств.
Впрочем, эта книга не столько о войне в Афганистане, ставшем полем боя для враждебных друг другу идеологий, сколько о людях на войне: солдатах и гражданских, мужчинах и женщинах.

В декабре 1979 года советские войска вошли в Афганистан, чтобы поддержать дружественный режим и уйти через полгода или год, однако благие намерения СССР обернулись долгой войной,…

Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one, the defenders fought the Japanese hand to hand in a battle that was amongst the most savage in modern warfare.

A garrison of no more than 1,500 fighting men, desperately short of water and with the wounded compelled to lie in the open, faced a force of 15,000 Japanese. They held the pass and prevented a Japanese victory that would have proved disastrous for the British. Another six weeks of bitter fighting followed as British and Indian reinforcements strove to drive the enemy out of India. When the battle was over, a Japanese army that had invaded India on a mission of imperial conquest had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Thousands of men lay dead on a devastated landscape, while tens of thousands more Japanese starved in a catastrophic retreat eastwards. They called the journey back to Burma the ‘Road of Bones’, as friends and comrades committed suicide or dropped dead from hunger along the jungle paths.

Fergal Keane has reported for the BBC from conflicts on every continent over the past 25 years, and he brings to this work of history not only rigorous scholarship but a raw understanding of the pitiless nature of war. It is a story filled with vivid characters: the millionaire's son who refused a commission and was awarded a VC for his sacrifice in battle, the Roedean debutante who led a guerrilla band in the jungle, and the General who defied the orders of a hated superior in order to save the lives of his men. Based on original research in Japan, Britain and India, ‘Road of Bones’ is a story about extraordinary courage and the folly of imperial dreams.

Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one,…

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans.

In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated— Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose.

Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corpse, equip it with secret (but false and misleading) papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would, they hoped, take the bait. The idea was approved by British intelligence officials, including Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond). Winston Churchill believed it might ring true to the Axis and help bring victory to the Allies.

Filled with spies, double agents, rogues, fearless heroes, and one very important corpse, the story of Operation Mincemeat reads like an international thriller.

Unveiling never-before-released material, Ben Macintyre brings the reader right into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles and spies, and the German Abwehr agents who suffered the “twin frailties of wishfulness and yesmanship.” He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley and Montagu and their near-impossible feats into a riveting adventure that not only saved thousands of lives but paved the way for a pivotal battle in Sicily and, ultimately, Allied success in the war.


From the Hardcover edition.

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best…

Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial new account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.

Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial…

Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk.

Manstein also stands as one of the war’s most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO.

Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein’s life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career.

Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed…

Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (also commonly known as MI6) was born a century ago amid fears of the rising power of other countries, especially Germany. The next forty years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important-and, until now, largely hidden-role in shaping the history of Europe and the world. This thorough, fascinating, and revelatory account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by any outsider to unveil the inner workings of the world's first spy agency.
MI6's early days were haphazard but it was quickly forged into an effective organization in the crucible of World War I. During these war years, MI6 also formed ties with the United States-harbingers of a relationship that would become vital to both countries' security as the century progressed. These early years also saw the development of techniques that would become plot devices in a thousand books and films-forgery, invisible ink, disguises, concealing mechanisms, and much more. The interwar years were nominally peaceful, but Britain perceived numerous threats, all of which MI6 was expected to keep tabs on. The outbreak of World War II once again caught MI6 off balance, and high-profile blunders (and the memoirs of MI6 operatives such as Graham Greene) created an impression of ineffectiveness. At the same time, however, the service was pioneering cryptography at Bletchley Park (where the Enigma code would be broken) and devising the very methods and equipment that would inspire Ian Fleming's novels.
In a way, the aftermath of World War II was as dramatic as the war itself had been, because 1945-49 saw not only the end of the British Empire but also the emergence of a new sort of conflict-the Cold War. We witness MI6 wrestling with these epic developments as it tightens its bonds with the newly christened CIA, changes that would dictate the shape of the service-and the world-for decades to come.

Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (also commonly known as MI6) was born a century ago amid fears of the rising power of other countries, especially Germany. The next forty…