Taylor caused a storm of outrage with this scandalous bestseller. Debunking what were accepted truths about the Second World War, he argued provocatively that Hitler did not set out to cause the war as part of an evil master plan, but blundered into it partly by accident, aided by the shortcomings of others. Fiercely attacked for vindicating Hitler, A.J.P. Taylor's stringent re-examination of the events preceding the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 opened up new debate, and is now recognized as a brilliant and classic piece of scholarly research. 'Highly original and penetrating...No one who has digested this enthralling work will ever be able to look at the period again in quite the same way'

    Maurice Keen examines tribal wars, the Crusades, the growth of trade and the shifting patterns of community life as villages grew into towns and towns into sizeable cities. He explores how Papal victories, by blurring the distinction between temporal and spiritual matters, eventually undermined the spiritual authority of the Church. And he discusses how the Hundred Years War escalated from a feudal dispute into a full-scale national conflict, until, by the mid-fifteenth century, changing economic and social conditions had transformed the unity of Christendom into merely a pious phrase.

    Looking back to the years prior to 1923, Preston demonstrates how electoral corruption infiltrated almost every sector of Spanish life, thus excluding the masses from organized politics and giving them a bitter choice between apathetic acceptance of a decrepit government or violent revolution. So ineffective was the Republic—which had been launched in 1873—that it paved the way for a military coup and dictatorship, led by Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923, exacerbating widespread profiteering and fraud. When Rivera was forced to resign in 1930, his fall brought forth a succession of feeble governments, stoking rancorous tensions that culminated in the tragic Spanish Civil War.With astonishing detail, Preston describes the ravages that rent Spain in half between 1936 and 1939. Tracing the frightening rise of Francisco Franco, Preston recounts how Franco grew into Spain’s most powerful military leader during the Civil War and how, after the war, he became a fascistic dictator who not only terrorized the Spanish population through systematic oppression and murder but also enriched corrupt officials who profited from severe economic plunder of Spain’s working class.The dictatorship lasted through World War II—during which Spain sided with Mussolini and Hitler—and only ended decades later, in 1975, when Franco’s death was followed by a painful yet bloodless transition to republican democracy. Yet, as Preston reveals, corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive effect on social cohesion into the twenty-first century, as economic crises, Catalan independence struggles, and financial scandals persist in dividing the country.Filled with vivid portraits of politicians and army officers, revolutionaries and reformers, and written in the “absorbing” (Economist) style for which Preston is so revered, A People Betrayed is the first historical work to examine the continuities of political unrest and national anxiety in Spain up until the present, providing a chilling reminder of just how fragile democracy remains in the twenty-first century.

    A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous "Angel of Death" - Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capactity he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this horrifying and sobering account.

    Speaking a mystifying array of languages and carrying outdated weapons, the troops were hopelessly unprepared for the mechanized warfare that would soon consume the entire continent.As prizewinning historian Geoffrey Wawro explains, the disorganization of these doomed conscripts perfectly mirrored Austra-Hungary itself. For years, the Dual Monarchy had been rotting from within, hollowed out by complacency and corruption at the highest levels. Germany goaded Austria into a longed-for fight with Russia and her allies before the monarchy collapsed completely, but the severity of the fighting was too much for the weakened Empire. By the time 1914 ended, the Habsburg army lay in ruins, and the course of the war seemed all but decided. Reconstructing the climax of the Austrian campaign in gripping detail, Wawro offers a riveting account of how Austria-Hungary plunged the West into a tragic and unnecessary war.

    Reporters from as far away as Argentina and Australia flocked to Munich for the sensational, four-week spectacle. By the end, Hitler would transform a fiasco into a stunning victory for the fledgling Nazi Party. The first book in English on the subject, The Trial of Adolf Hitler draws on never-before-published sources to re-create in riveting detail a haunting failure of justice with catastrophic consequences.

    He is considered "a modern saint" who offered protection to his people during the Cultural Revolution; an admirable figure in an otherwise traumatic and bloody era. Works about Zhou in China are heavily censored, and every hint of criticism is removed—so when Gao Wenqian first published this groundbreaking, provocative biography in Hong Kong, it was immediately banned in the People's Republic. Using classified documents spirited out of China, Gao Wenqian offers an objective human portrait of the real Zhou, a man who lived his life at the heart of Chinese politics for fifty years, who survived both the Long March and the Cultural Revolution not thanks to ideological or personal purity, but because he was artful, crafty, and politically supple. He may have had the looks of a matinee idol, and Nixon may have called him "the greatest statesman of our era," but Zhou's greatest gift was to survive, at almost any price, thanks to his acute understanding of where political power resided at any one time.

    The esteemed and critically acclaimed historian Garrett Mattingly explores all dimensions of the naval campaign, which captured the attention of the European world and played a deciding role in the settlement of the New World. “So skillfully constructed it reads like a novel” (New York Times), The Armada is sure to appeal to the scholar and amateur historian alike.

    E.P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making & recreates the whole life experience of people who suffered loss of status & freedom, who underwent degradation & who yet created a culture & political consciousness of great vitality. "Thompson's book has been called controversial, but perhaps only because so many have forgotten how explosive England was during the Regency & the early reign of Victoria. Without any reservation, The Making of the English Working Class is the most important study of those days since the classic work of the Hammonds."--Commentary "Mr Thompson's deeply human imagination & controlled passion help us to recapture the agonies, heroisms & illusions of the working class as it made itself. No one interested in the history of the English people should fail to read his book."--Times Literary Supplement

    As he disembarked from the aircraft, he held aloft a piece of paper, which contained the promise that Britain and Germany would never go to war with one another again. He had returned bringing “Peace with honour—Peace for our time.”Drawing on a wealth of archival material, acclaimed historian David Faber delivers a sweeping reassessment of the extraordinary events of 1938, tracing the key incidents leading up to the Munich Conference and its immediate aftermath: Lord Halifax’s ill-fated meeting with Hitler; Chamberlain’s secret discussions with Mussolini; and the Berlin scandal that rocked Hitler’s regime. He takes us to Vienna, to the Sudentenland, and to Prague. In Berlin, we witness Hitler inexorably preparing for war, even in the face of opposition from his own generals; in London, we watch as Chamberlain makes one supreme effort after another to appease Hitler.Resonating with an insider’s feel for the political infighting Faber uncovers, Munich, 1938 transports us to the war rooms and bunkers, revealing the covert negotiations and scandals upon which the world’s fate would rest. It is modern history writing at its best.

    Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right has dominated American politics and government. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and the momentous consequences that followed.Ronald Reagan has been the single most important political figure of this age. Without Reagan, the conservative movement would have never been as successful as it was. In his political persona as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even a bit of the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history there have been a few leading figures who, for better or worse, have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt—and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism's ascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the preeminent political figure.Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past.

    His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

    Swearing eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler, it infiltrated every aspect of German life and was responsible for the deaths of millions. This gripping history recounts the strange and, at times, absurd true story of Hitler's SS. It exposes an organization that was not directed by some devilishly efficient system but was the product of accident, inevitability, and the random convergence of criminals, social climbers, and romantics. Above all, this eye-opening book describes in fascinating detail the chaotic political conditions that allowed the SS-despite rivalries and bizarre conditions-to assume and exercise unaccountable power.

    At stake were not only the reputations of two historians but the record of history itself.

    Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future?We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse—but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation.With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.