283,755 Books and Counting

"Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict's first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles questions such as: Could the war have been avoided? Could it have been lost? Were the strategic decisions the rights ones? How well did the British organize and fight? How well did the British live up to their own values? What difference did the war make in the end to the fate of the nation? In answering these and other essential questions he focuses on the human contingencies of the war, weighing directly at the roles of individuals and the outcomes determined by luck or chance. Moreover, he looks intimately at the changes in wartime British society and culture. Britain at Bay draws on a large cast of characters--from the leading statesmen and military commanders who made the decisions, to the ordinary men, women, and children who carried them out and lived through their consequences--in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. For better or worse, much of Britain today is ultimately the product of the experiences of 1938-1941"-- Provided by publisher.

"New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume reveals how a courageous reporter uncovered one of greatest and deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century--the true effects of the atom bomb--potentially saving millions of lives"-- Provided by publisher.

"On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which both Churchill and Eisenhower denied. But Alexander's breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells, as well as the heroic perseverance of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads--a researcher and doctor as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive--were instrumental in ushering in a new era of cancer research led by the Sloan Kettering Institute."-- Provided by publisher.

"The incredible, untold story of the WWII vets who overthrew their corrupt hometown government--the only successful armed rebellion on US soil since the War of Independence. Corrupt politician Paul Cantrell was in complete control of McMinn County, Tennessee, his whims enforced by the violent Sheriff Pat Mansfield and his deputies. On Election Day, Cantrell and the sheriff seized the ballot boxes and brought them to the jail "to be counted" in secret. Soldiers came home from World War II to find their community in the grips of this corrupt political machine. These veteran soldiers, who became known as "The Fighting Bunch," armed themselves and lay siege to the jail as the National Guard closed in. After six hours of gunfire and dynamite blasts, Boss Cantrell and Sheriff Mansfield fled the state. The deputies surrendered. The ballot boxes were opened and counted. The GI slate was elected, and the story buried. This episode in U.S. history has never been more relevant, but has never been fully told. At the time of the rebellion, national news outlets jammed the phone lines into town, asking questions before the shooting had stopped. Journalists beat a path to Athens from across the country. MGM Studios signed people up to play themselves in the movie, but the film fell apart when the cast reconsidered. Rebuilding their community was the priority over fame and money. After years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, author Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the seminal--yet untold--events in American election history"-- Provided by publisher.

"...[a] narrative account of the top-secret U.S. mission to kill Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese commander who masterminded Pearl Harbor."-- Publisher marketing.

"Berlin, November 1937. In a secret meeting with his top advisors, Adolf Hitler proclaims the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Europe. Some conservatives are unnerved by this grandiose plan, but they are soon silenced, setting in motion eventsthat will lead to the most calamitous war in history. Benjamin Carter Hett, the author of The Death of Democracy, his acclaimed history of the fall of the Weimar Republic, takes us from Berlin to London, Moscow, and Washington to show how anti-Nazi forcesinside and outside Germany came to understand Hitler's true menace to European civilization and learned to oppose him. Drawing on original sources in German, English, French, and Russian, including newly released intelligence documents, he paints a sweeping portrait of governments under siege, populated by larger-than-life figures like Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Neville Chamberlain, Franklin Roosevelt, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Vyacheslav Molotov. The Nazi Menace evokes a time when the veritiesof life were subverted, a time marked by fake news, cultural unrest over refugees, and the challenges of national security in a consumerist democracy. To read Hett's book is to see the 1930s-and our world today-in a new and unnerving light."-- Provided by publisher.

"On July 10, 1943, the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted took place, larger even than the Normandy invasion eleven months later: 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops came ashore or were parachuted onto Sicily, signaling the start of the campaign to defeat Nazi Germany on European soil. Operation HUSKY, as it was known, was enormously complex, involving dramatic battles on land, in the air, and at sea. Yet, despite its drama and its paramount importance to ultimate Allied victory, very little has been written about the 38-day battle for Sicily. Based on much new research, Sicily '43 offers vital new perspective on a major turning point in World War II. The characters involved-General George Patton and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery among many-were as colorful as the battles across the scorching plains and above the peaks of Sicily were brutal. Among Holland's great skills is incorporating the experience of on-the-ground participants on all sides--from American colonel Jim Gavin, British major Hedley Verity, and Canadian lieutenant Farley Mowat to brigade commander Wilhelm Schmalz, Luftwaffe fighter pilot Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff, and Italian combatants, civilians, and mafiosi alike--giving readers an intimate sense of what occurred in July and August 1943. Emphasizing the significance of Allied air superiority, Holland overturns conventional narratives that have criticized the Sicily campaign for the slowness of the Allied advance and that so many German and Italian soldiers escaped to the mainland; rather, he shows that clearing the island in 38 days against geographical challenges and fierce resistance was an impressive achievement. A powerful and dramatic account by a master military historian, Sicily '43 fills a major gap in the narrative history of World War II"-- Provided by publisher.

"The true story of an audacious resistance campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women--Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe --who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute wicked insults against Hitler and calls to desert, a PSYOPs tactic known as 'paper bullets,' designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home of Jersey in the British Channel Islands"-- Provided by publisher.

"The story of the fascinating and fateful "daughter diplomacy" of Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill, and Kathleen Harriman, three glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference with Stalin in the waning days of World War II"-- Provided by publisher.

"In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assess whether the US should send aid to Russia as it had to Britain. And unofficially he was there to determine whether Josef Stalin -- the man who had starved four million Ukrainians to death in the early 1930s, another million in the purges of the late 1930s, and a further million in the labor camps of the Gulag -- was worth saving. Hopkins sensed that saving Stalin was going to be a treacherous business. In this powerful narrative, author John Kelly chronicles the turbulent wartime relationship between Britain, America, and the Soviet Union with a unique focus on unknown and unexplored aspects of the story, including how Britain and America employed the promise of a second front in France to restrain Soviet territorial ambitions and how the Soviets, in their turn, used threats of a separate peace with Germany to extract concessions from the western allies. Kelly paints a vivid picture of how the war impacted the relationship between the leaders and war managers among the Allies. In Saving Stalin, for the first time, the war becomes a major character, co-equal with the book's three other major characters: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill"-- Provided by publisher.

"Now at 95, one of the few living members of the Greatest Generation shares his experiences at last in one of the most remarkable World War II stories ever told. As the Allied Invasion of Normandy launched in the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, Henry Langrehr, an American paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, was among the thousands of Allies who parachuted into occupied France. Surviving heavy anti-aircraft fire, he crashed through the glass roof of a greenhouse in Sainte-Mère-Église. While many of the soldiers in his unit died, Henry and other surviving troops valiantly battled enemy tanks to a standstill. Then, on June 29th, Henry was captured by the Nazis. The next phase of his incredible journey was beginning. Kept for a week in the outer ring of a death camp, Henry witnessed the Nazis' unspeakable brutality--the so-called Final Solution, with people marched to their deaths, their bodies discarded like cords of wood. Transported to a work camp, he endured horrors of his own when he was forced to live in unbelievable squalor and labor in a coal mine with other POWs. Knowing they would be worked to death, he and a friend made a desperate escape. When a German soldier cornered them in a barn, the friend was fatally shot; Henry struggled with the soldier, killing him and taking his gun. Perilously traveling westward toward Allied controlled land on foot, Henry faced the great ethical and moral dilemmas of war firsthand, needing to do whatever it took to survive. Finally, after two weeks behind enemy lines, he found an American unit and was rescued. Awaiting him at home was Arlene, who, like millions of other American women, went to work in factories and offices to build the armaments Henry and the Allies needed for victory. Whatever It Took is her story, too, bringing to life the hopes and fears of those on the homefront awaiting their loved ones to return. A tale of heroism, hope, and survival featuring 30 photographs, Whatever It Took is a timely reminder of the human cost of freedom and a tribute to unbreakable human courage and spirit in the darkest of times."--Amazon.com

An impossible mission in wartime Italy: the next explosive bestseller from Damien Lewis. In the hard-fought winter of 1944 the Allied advanced northwards through Italy, but stalled on the fearsome mountainous defences of the Gothic Line. Two men were parachuted in, in an effort to break the deadlock. Their mission: to penetrate deep into enemy territory and lay waste to the Germans' impregnable headquarters. At the eleventh hour mission commanders radioed for David 'The Mad Piper' Kilpatrick to be flown in, resplendent in his tartan kilt. They wanted this fearless war hero to lead the assault, piping Highland Laddie as he went - so leaving an indelible British signature to deter Nazi reprisals. As the column of raiders formed up, there was shocking news. High command radioed through an order to stand down, having assessed the chances of success at little more than zero. But in defiance of orders, and come hell or high-water, they were going in. Damien Lewis's new bestseller tells the incredible story.

"A single photograph-an exceptionally rare "action shot" documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family-drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholar"-- Provided by publisher.

"In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of this global military conflict did not cease with the signing of truces and peace treaties. Millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany, a country in complete disarray. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate foreigners, and attempted to repatriate them to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the USSR. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained over a million displaced persons who either refused to go home or, in the case of many, had no home to which to return. They would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, divided by nationalities, temporary homelands in exile, with their own police forces, churches, schools, newspapers, and medical facilities. The international community couldn't agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of fruitless debate and inaction, an International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept anyone for resettlement, finally passed a Displaced Persons Bill - but as Cold War fears supplanted memories of WWII atrocities, the bill only granted visas to those who were reliably anti-communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators, Waffen-SS members, and war criminals, while barring the Jews who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the passage of the controversial UN resolution for the partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors finally able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany."-- Provided by publisher.

"[Harro Schulze-Boysen and Libertas Haas-Heye] were leading a network of ani-fascist fighters that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underworld. Poets, philosophers, workers, and artists, they were all freethinkers united by a desire to bring down Hitler at any cost. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funneling Nazi battle plans to the Allies... Libertas used her position at the propaganda ministry to begin collecting evidence of the mass murder of Jews... Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters, and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism, and sacrifice in The Bohemians."--Dust jacket flap.

"Joe Pappalardo's Inferno tells the true story of the men who flew the deadliest missions of World War II, and an unlikely hero who received the Medal of Honor in the midst of the bloodiest military campaign in aviation history. There's no higher accolade in the U.S. military than the Medal of Honor, and 472 people received it for their action during World War II. But only one was demoted right after: Maynard Harrison Smith. Smith is one of the most unlikely heroes of the war, where he served in B-17s during the early days of the bombing of France and Germany from England. From his juvenile delinquent past in Michigan, through the war and during the decades after, Smith's life seemed to be a series of very public missteps. The other airmen took to calling the 5-foot, 5-inch airman "Snuffy" after an unappealing movie character. This is also the man who, on a tragically mishandled mission over France on May 1, 1943, single-handedly saved the crewman in his stricken B-17. With every other gunner injured or bailed out, Smith stood alone in the fuselage of a shattered, nameless bomber and fought fires, treated wounded crew and fought off fighters. His ordeal is part of a forgotten mission that aircrews came to call the May Day Massacre. The skies over Europe in 1943 were a charnel house for U.S. pilots, who were being led by tacticians surprised by the brutal effectiveness of German defenses. By May 1943 the combat losses among bomb crews were a staggering 40 to 50 percent. The backdrop of Smith's story intersects with some of the luminaries of aviation history, including Curtis Lemay, Ira Eaker and "Hap" Arnold, during critical times of their storied careers. Inferno also examines Smith's life in a new, comprehensive light, through the use of exclusive interviews of those who knew him (including fellow MOH recipients and family) as well as public and archival records. This is both a thrilling and horrifying story of the air war over Europe during WWII and a fascinating look at one of America's forgotten heroes"-- Provided by publisher.

A narrative account of the Doolittle Raids of World War II traces the daring Raiders attack on mainland Japan, the fate of the crews who survived the mission, and the international war crimes trials that defined Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.

"The sea had become a mass grave by 1941 as Hitler's four capital warships--Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Tirpitz, and Bismarck, the largest warship on the ocean--roamed the wind-swept waves, threatening the Allied war effort and sending thousands of men to the icy depths of the North Atlantic. Bristling with guns and steeled in heavy armor, these reapers of the sea could outrun and outgun any battleship in the Allied arsenal. The deadly menace kept Winston Churchill awake at night he deemed them "targets of supreme consequence." The campaign against Hitler's surface fleet would continue into the dying days of World War II and involve everything from massive warships engaged in bloody, fire-drenched battle to daring commando raids in German occupied harbors. This is the fast-paced story of the Allied bomber crews, brave sailors, and bold commandos who "sunk the Bismarck" and won a hard-fought victory over Hitler's iron sea. Using official war diaries, combat reports, eyewitness accounts and personal letters, Simon Read brings the action and adventure to vivid life. The result is an enthralling and gripping story of the Allied heroes who fought on a watery battlefield"-- Provided by publisher.

"The life and mysterious death of Otto Wachter, former Governor of Nazi-occupied Poland, who died in the Vatican after World War II"-- Provided by publisher.

"In December 1944, Frank Sisson deployed to Europe as part of General George S. Patton's famed Third Army. Over the next six months, as the war in Europe raged, Sisson would participate in many of World War II's most consequential events, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Dachau. Now ninety-five years old, Frank shares for the first time his remarkable story of life under General Patton." -- Inside front jacket flap.

Documents the true story of a U.S. Navy destroyer that inspired the writings of John Ford and Herman Wouk, drawing on the journals and other writings of five shipmates who witnessed the Anzio attacks and D-Day invasion.

"A best-selling historian's chronicle of the dramatic months from the Munich Agreement to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II. In the autumn of 1938, Europe believed in the promise of peace. But only a year later, the fateful decisions of just a few men had again led Europe to a massive world war. Drawing on contemporary diaries, memoirs, and newspapers, as well as recorded interviews, 1939 is a narrative account of what the coming of the Second World War felt like to those who lived through it. Frederick Taylor, author of renowned histories of the Berlin Wall and the bombing of Dresden, highlights the day-to-day experiences of ordinary citizens as well as those who were at the height of power in Germany and Britain. Their voices lend an intimate flavor to this often-surprising account of the period and reveal a marked disconnect between government and people, for few people in either country wanted war. 1939 is a vivid and richly peopled narrative of Europe's slide into the horrors of war and a powerful warning for our own time."-- Provided by publisher.

"The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll, "one of the great storytellers of war" (Evan Thomas). Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts. Ian W. Toll's narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also takes the reader into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided. Lionel Barber of the Financial Times chose the second volume of the series (The Conquering Tide) as the preeminent book of 2016, calling it "military history at its best." Readers who have been waiting for the conclusion of Toll's masterpiece will be thrilled by this final volume"-- Provided by publisher.

"From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939--a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself."-- Provided by publisher.