But in the aftermath of the assassination in Sarajevo, the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and not even the Middle East could escape the vast and enduring consequences of one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. The Great War spelled the end of the Ottomans, unleashing powerful forces that would forever change the face of the Middle East.In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Bolstered by German money, arms, and military advisors, the Ottomans took on the Russian, British, and French forces, and tried to provoke Jihad against the Allies in their Muslim colonies. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies' favor. The great cities of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and, finally, Damascus fell to invading armies before the Ottomans agreed to an armistice in 1918.The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands between the victorious powers, and laid the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.

    Powell first arrived at the servants' entrance of one of those great houses in the 1920s. As a kitchen maid - the lowest of the low - she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30am and went on until after dark. It was a far cry from her childhood on the beaches of Hove, where money and food were scarce, but warmth and laughter never were. Yet from the gentleman with a penchant for stroking the housemaids' curlers, to raucous tea-dances with errand boys, to the heartbreaking story of Agnes the pregnant under-parlormaid, fired for being seduced by her mistress's nephew, Margaret's tales of her time in service are told with wit, warmth, and a sharp eye for the prejudices of her situation. Margaret Powell's true story of a life spent in service is a fascinating "downstairs" portrait of the glittering, long-gone worlds behind the closed doors of Downton Abbey and 165 Eaton Place.

    Together they began Show Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for the world's most vulnerable children by providing financial assistance to families wishing to adopt, as well as increasing awareness of the orphan crisis and funneling resources to orphans domestically and internationally. Mary Beth serves as president of Show Hope and is a speaker for Women of Faith 2010 with her husband. She is also coauthor with Steven of the Shaoey and Dot series of children's picture books. Mary Beth and Steven have six children: Emily, Caleb, Will Franklin, and adopted daughters Shaohannah Hope, Stevey Joy, and Maria Sue, who is now with Jesus. The Chapmans live in Tennessee.www.MaryBethChapman.comEllen Vaughn is a bestselling author and inspirational speaker. Her recent books include It's All About Him with Denise Jackson (wife of Alan Jackson), which debuted at #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list. She is also coauthor with Chuck Colson of Being the Body. In addition to her nonfiction work, Vaughn is an award-winning novelist. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband, Lee.

    "Startlingly candid".--People. Includes never-before-seen photographs.

    By the end of the action, very little ground had been won: the Allied Forces had made just 12 km. For this slight gain, more than a million lives were lost. There were more than 400,000 British, 200,000 French, and 500,000 German casualties during the fighting. Twelve Days on the Somme is a memoir of the last spell of front-line duty performed by the 2nd Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Written by Sidney Rogerson, a young officer in B Company, it gives an extraordinarily frank and often moving account of what it was really like to fight through one of the most notorious battles of the First World War. Its special message, however, is that, contrary to received assumptions and the popular works of writers like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, men could face up to the terrible ordeal such a battle presented with resilience, good humour and without loss of morale. This is a classic work whose reprinting is long overdue.This edition includes a new Introduction by Malcolm Brown and a Foreword by Rogerson's son Commander Jeremy Rogerson.

    With stunning, expressive illustrations and ample direct quotation from the diary, this edition will expand the readership for this important and lasting work of history and literature.

    Even when they first slept together Hutton had no idea who Mercury was, and when the star told him his name it meant nothing to him. Hutton worked as a barber at the Savoy Hotel and retained his job and his lodgings in Sutton, Surrey, for two years after moving in with Mercury, and then worked as his gardener. He was never fully assimilated into Mercury's jet-setting lifestyle, nor did he want to be, but from 1985 until Mercury's death in 1991 he was closer to him than anyone and knew all Mercury's closest friends: the other members of Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, Phil Collins to name a few. Ever present at the countless Sunday lunch gatherings and opulent parties, Hutton has a wealth of anecdotes about as well as a deep understanding of, Mercury's life. He also nursed Mercury through his terminal illness, often held him throughout the night in his final weeks, and was with him as he died. No one can tell the story of the last few years of Mercury's private life - the ecstasies and the agonies - more accurately or honestly than Jim Hutton.

    Philippa Gregory and two historians, leading experts in their field who helped Philippa to research the novels, tell the extraordinary 'true' stories of the life of these women who until now have been largely forgotten by history, their background and times, highlighting questions which are raised in the fiction and illuminating the novels. With a foreword by Philippa Gregory - in which Philippa writes revealingly about the differences between history and fiction and examines the gaps in the historical record - and beautifully illustrated with rare portraits, The Women of the Cousins' War is an exciting new addition to the Philippa Gregory oeuvre.

    One an underground resistance fighter, a bold young woman determined to vanquish the enemy occupiers; the other a prisoner of war, a man longing to escape the confines of the camp so he can battle again. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers, slipped through the wire of the compound, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.Woven through their tales of great bravery, daring escapes, betrayal, torture, and retaliation is their remarkable love story that survived against all odds. This is an extraordinary account of two ordinary people who found love during the unimaginable hardships of Hitler’s barbaric regime as told by their son-in-law Doug Gold, who decided to tell their story from the moment he heard about their remarkable tale of bravery, resilience, and resistance.

    In 1909, Clementine Churchill steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill saves her husband.Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the brilliant and ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

    But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.Now with photographs from the original edition.

    gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train . . .'In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway').Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' Sunday Times'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' John Cleese'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man' Stephen FrySpike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

    But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In The Storm of War, Andrew Roberts gave us a tantalizing glimpse of Churchill the war leader. Now, at last, we have the full and definitive biography, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable, about one of the great leaders of all time.Roberts was granted exclusive access to extensive new material: the transcripts of war cabinet meetings - the equivalent of the Nixon and JFK tapes - diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs, and detailed notes taken by the king after their bi-weekly meetings. Having read every one of Churchill's letters, including deeply personal ones that Churchill's son Randolph had previously chosen to withhold, and spoken to more than one hundred people who knew or worked with him, Roberts identifies the hidden forces fueling Churchill's drive. Churchill put his faith in the British Empire and fought as hard to preserve it as he did to defend London. Having started his career in India and South Africa, he understood better than most idealists how hard it can be to pacify reluctant people far from home.We think of Churchill as a hero of the age of mechanized warfare, but Roberts's masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges we face today and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership, and moral conviction.

    But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.

    As Season 3 of the award-winning TV series opens, it is 1920 and Downton Abbey is waking up to a world changed forever by World War I. New characters arrive and new intrigues thrive as the old social order is challenged by new expectations.In this new era, different family members abound (including Cora's American mother, played by Shirley MacLaine) and changed dynamics need to be resolved: Which branch of the family tree will Lord Grantham's first grandchild belong to? What will become of the servants, both old and new?The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, carefully pieced together at the heart and hearth of the ancestral home of the Crawleys, takes us deeper into the story of every important member of the Downton estate.This lavish, entirely new book from Jessica Fellowes focuses on each character individually, examining their motivations, their actions, and the inspirations behind them. An evocative combination of story, history, and behind-the-scenes drama, it will bring fans even closer to the secret, beating heart of the house.