Routed in Manchuria, the Russians decided to strike back. In October 1904 their Baltic fleet, a haphazard armada of some fifty outdated and ill-equipped men-of-war, led by a burnt-out neurotic and manned by 10,000 reluctant and badly-trained sailors, set sail for the East. Their plan was to unite with the Pacific squadron, then trapped in Port Arthur, and crush the soldiers of Admiral Togo. The two fleets met at Tsushima on May 27, 1905. Most thought the Russians would have little trouble defeating Japanese naval forces. But what followed was perhaps the greatest naval victory of all time. As Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet lumbered through the Straits of Tsushima towards Vladivostok on 27 May 1905, the Japanese, in one of the most crushing naval victories of all time, utterly destroyed the Russian armada. Richard Hough recounts the fleet's extraordinary seven-month journey from the Baltic to the Far East in this gripping naval history. "Hough is a good storyteller with a refreshing, breezy style." The Wall Street Journal Richard Hough, the distinguished naval historian and winner of the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award (1972) was the author of many acclaimed books in the field including ‘Admirals in Collision’, ‘The Great War at Sea: 1914-18’, and ‘The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45’. He was also the biographer of Mountbatten, and his last biography, ‘Captain James Cook’, became a world bestseller. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    Using toolboxes, ambulances, and other ingenious measures, Irena Sendler defied the Nazis and risked her own life by saving and then hiding Jewish children. Her secret list of the children's real identities was kept safe, buried in two jars under a tree in war-torn Warsaw. An inspiring story of courage and compassion, this biography includes a list of resources, source notes, and an index.

    Two vast armies engaged one another on land and in the air, in a conflict that included the most costly single day of aerial warfare of all time. This was the battle of Kursk - a battle so terrible that even Hitler confessed it made his ‘stomach turn over’. Citadel was the last great German offensive on the Eastern Front; its aim was to claw back the initiative after the surrender of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943. The location chosen by Hitler was the Kursk salient in the heartland of the Ukraine. The date was 5 July 1943, the codename ‘Citadel’. The Red Army, warned of the German plans by the ‘Lucy’ spy network in Switzerland, was prepared to defend the salient in massive strength and depth. Against its breakwaters Hitler launched his finest armoured divisions, only to see them mangled beyond repair. No sooner had the German thrusts been contained, while within the tantalizing grasp of success, than the Red Army delivered a series of crushing counter-blows with were to drive the Wehrmacht back beyond the River Dnieper. Characteristically, Hitler had gambled all on a throw of a single dice and had lost the initiative in the East - never to regain it. 'Citadel' provides a detailed picture of the Battle of Kursk, from the strategic tug-of-war waged within both high commands in the agonizing months which preceded the German offensive, to the first-hand experiences of the troops on the ground and the airmen flying over the blazing steppe as the battle reached fever pitch. Robin Cross places the battle firmly within the wider strategic context of the spring and summer of 1943, months in which Hitler and Stalin steeled themselves to take decisions which would decide the course of the war and the shape of the peace which followed. Praise for 'Fallen Eagle': "Mesmerising account of those final, bloody weeks of war ... Cross's account of the final hysterical days in his Berlin Bunker is masterful." Sunday Express Robin Cross is a distinguished journalist and military historian whose books include VE Day: Victory in Europe, The Bombers: Strategy and Tactics and The US Marine Corps. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    Hitler's soldiers stormed the city in September 1942 in a bid to complete the conquest of Europe. Yet Stalingrad never fell. After months of bitter fighting, 100,000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops. During the battle and shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders and soldiers, party officials and workers spoke with a team of historians who visited from Moscow to record their conversations. The tapestry of their voices provides groundbreaking insights into the thoughts and feelings of Soviet citizens during wartime. Legendary sniper Vasily Zaytsev recounted the horrors he witnessed at Stalingrad: "You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park.[ . . .] That has a tremendous impact." Nurse Vera Gurova attended hundreds of wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital every day, but she couldn't forget one young amputee who begged her to avenge his suffering. "Every soldier and officer in Stalingrad was itching to kill as many Germans as possible," said Major Nikolai Aksyonov. These testimonials were so harrowing and candid that the Kremlin forbade their publication, and they were forgotten by modern history -- until now. Revealed here in English for the first time, they humanize the Soviet defenders and allow Jochen Hellbeck, in Stalingrad, to present a definitive new portrait of the most fateful battle of World War II.

    In a courageous investigation, Antony Sutton establishes tangible historical links between US capitalists and Russian communists. Drawing on State Department files, personal papers of key Wall Street figures, biographies and conventional histories, Sutton reveals: the role of Morgan banking executives in funneling illegal Bolshevik gold into the US; the co-option of the American Red Cross by powerful Wall Street forces; the intervention by Wall Street sources to free the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, whose aim was to topple the Russian government; the deals made by major corporations to capture the huge Russian market a decade and a half before the US recognized the Soviet regime; and, the secret sponsoring of Communism by leading businessmen, who publicly championed free enterprise. "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" traces the foundations of Western funding of the Soviet Union. Dispassionately, and with overwhelming documentation, the author details a crucial phase in the establishment of Communist Russia. This classic study - first published in 1974 and part of a key trilogy - is reproduced here in its original form. (The other volumes in the series include "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" and a study of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "1933 Presidential election in the United States").

    Noon on January 20th—Inauguration Day—is only hours away. A flaw in the Constitution, and an even more flawed presidential succession act, have opened the door to disaster and Zorin intends to exploit both weaknesses to their fullest.Armed with a weapon leftover from the Cold War, one long thought to be just a myth, Zorin plans to attack. He’s aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America’s oldest fraternal organization—the Society of Cincinnati—a group that once lent out its military savvy to presidents, including helping to formulate three invasion plans of what was intended to be America’s 14th colony—Canada.In a race against the clock that starts in the frozen extremes of Russia and ultimately ends at the White House itself, Malone must not only battle Zorin, he must also confront a crippling fear that he’s long denied, but which now jeopardizes everything. Steve Berry’s trademark mix of history and speculation is all here in this provocative new thriller.

    Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters— musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives—who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life

    Tow ferocious, excruciating years later, his forces met a final devastating defeat in the frozen streets of Stalingrad. Now this entire campaign has been recreated so accurately and vividly by the author of The Foxes of the Desert that you can hear its noise, feel its exhaustion, gasp at the blunders on both sides, follow every movement of the great armies.

    The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin’s attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over.   Wilson situates Ukraine’s February insurgence within Russia’s expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin’s extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin’s agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising—the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

    The Russian army was camped on the other side. When the signal came to begin Operation Barbarossa he and his comrades from the German Wehrmacht stormed over the River and began an assault that took millions of Germans deep into Russian territory. For some the journey was brief. For others, like Oskar, it would last for years, and the struggle did not end when the fighting was over. This is the story of one German soldier’s experience in combat and captivity. It is the story of bravery, despair, deception, and survival.

    So punishing was life in these units that officers in regular formations threatened to send recalcitrant troops to penal battalions. Alexander Pyl'cyn led his penal unit through the Soviets' massive offensive in the summer of 1944, the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the bitter assault on Berlin in 1945. He survived the war, but 80 percent of his men did not.

    Since shaking off communism two decades ago, the country has seemed wobbly at best, thoroughly corrupt and threatening at worst. But in recent years, as noted scholar Daniel Treisman shows in this compelling account, Russia has re-emerged as a pivotal nation in world affairs. In The Return, Treisman cuts through the myths and misinformation, as well as ongoing academic and journalistic debates, to present a portrait of a strong and independent country that is returning to the international community on its own terms. Drawing on two decades of research, interviews, and insider observation, The Return provides the first comprehensive history of post-communist Russia. From Gorbachev to Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev, it traces the twists and turns of the country’s evolution, uncovering the causes behind Russia’s plunge into depression in the 1990s and resurgence since 2000. Rather than a nation frozen in ancient authoritarian traditions, as Russia is often portrayed, Treisman shows a society modernizing rapidly, with a government that, although less than democratic, is sensitive to public opinion but which has been repeatedly buffeted by economic forces—the collapse of Soviet planning, the gyrations of oil prices—that have alternately boosted and drained the leaders’ popularity. Knocked off balance once again by the global financial crisis, the Kremlin’s current bosses must now struggle to reignite the growth on which the stability of their regime depends.As Russia grapples with its economic difficulties, the West will have to come to terms with the new Russia. With its UN Security Council veto, thousands of atomic warheads, continental dimensions, and vast mineral resources, Moscow sits at the epicenter of the toughest challenges the world will confront in the next generation—from Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation to energy security and global warming. To enlist Russia’s cooperation in solving the problems of the twenty-first century, Western leaders will need to look beyond common misconceptions to see the country as it is rather than as it has often been imagined or depicted.Based on extensive research by an expert with intimate knowledge of the country, the book provides insight into the prospects for democracy in Russia, the challenges and opportunities of doing business there, the wars in Chechnya, and the motives behind Moscow’s foreign policy. The Return is the ultimate accounting of what Russia is today, how it got there, and where it’s going.

    In order to get at the truth, this meticulously researched work covers the lives of both these men, from their youth right up to their ultimate collision. The Man Who Killed Rasputin is a superb retelling of a major historical event and is based on new revelations from the St. Petersburg police files. The book features many previously unpublished photographs, including the recently released Rasputin death pictures.At the time of the murder, Prince Youssoupov owned palaces throughout Russia. Just two years later, he and his wife were reduced to selling their possessions to survive. And wherever he went, he was always pointed out as the man who killed Rasputin.

    Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works.Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.

    In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products.This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state. Terry Martin provides a comprehensive survey and interpretation, based on newly available archival sources, of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. He traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of dozens of official national languages, and the world's first mass affirmative action programs. Martin examines the contradictions inherent in the Soviet nationality policy, which sought simultaneously to foster the growth of national consciousness among its minority populations while dictating the exact content of their cultures; to sponsor national liberation movements in neighboring countries, while eliminating all foreign influence on the Soviet Union's many diaspora nationalities. Martin explores the political logic of Stalin's policies as he responded to a perceived threat to Soviet unity in the 1930s by re-establishing the Russians as the state's leading nationality and deporting numerous enemy nations.