Wars & Conflicts

The epic successor to Tim Weiner’s National Book Award-winning classic, Legacy of Ashes: a gripping and revelatory history of the CIA in the 21st century, reaching from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s battles with Russia and China—and with the President of the United States.

History is swamped by patriotic myths about the aerial combat fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the summer of 1940. In his gripping history of the Battle of Britain, Len Deighton drew on a decade of research and his own wartime experiences to puncture these myths and point towards a more objective, and even more inspiring, truth.

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans.

Monopoly X is the fascinating true story of what is arguably the most unusual and daring secret operation of World War II. The masterminds at England’s top-secret MI-9, and later America’s MIS-X, created a special version of the popular game, hiding tools, maps, and money within game boards—delivered by an unwitting Red Cross—to captured Allied servicemen held at gunpoint behind barbed wire in German prison camps. This ingenious and complex plot, dubbed “Monopoly X,” was never discovered by the Nazis and led to successful Allied breakouts.

Who Will Tell My Story? presents an ordinary existence interrupted by unfathomably seismic and unjust events. On the ground during the first months of the assault on Gaza following the events of 7 October, the author of this diary - first published in The Guardian - maps out the physical and psychological terrain of a life under siege.

Only a man who had lived all his life in Suffolk could produce such a vivid and accurate portrayal of Akenfield and its inhabitants. Ronald Blythe recounts the personal recollections of, among others, the local school keeper, doctor, blacksmith, saddler, district nurse and magistrate as they discussed farming, education, welfare, class, religion and death. Originally published in 1969, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.

At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. Here they attempted to begin again—but their refuge would all too soon become a trap. For the first time, Laura Hobson Faure brings to life the experiences of these children, and the Jewish and non-Jewish organizations who helped them. Drawing on survivors' testimonies as well as children's diaries, letters, drawings, songs, and poems, Who Will Rescue Us? recreates their journeys.

The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms.

Told with a thrilling pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North.

The first full and definitive narrative of one of the most shocking and largely unknown events of racial injustice in US history: the execution of nineteen Black soldiers in Texas.

The Arghandab River Valley is known for its lush vegetation from its grape furrows and its pomegranate orchards. It's also known as the birthplace of several Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar and Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, and was a major crossing route for weapons coming from Pakistan into Kandahar. This hostile environment had already claimed the lives of many seasoned infantrymen.

Eight women. Thousands of children saved. Unforgettable stories of courage. They were teachers, nurses, students—ordinary women who made extraordinary choices. In the darkest days of World War II, they risked everything to save the most vulnerable: the children. Saving the Children of the Holocaust tells their incredible stories.

The Hiroshima Men’s vivid narrative recounts the decade-long journey toward this first atomic attack. It charts the race for the bomb during World War II, as the Allies fought the Axis powers, and is told through several key characters: General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer; pioneering Army Air Force pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr.; the mayor of Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya, who would die alongside eighty thousand fellow citizens; and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer John Hersey.

Most of the great military campaigns and breakthroughs of World War II would not have been successful without the efforts of teams of people working unsung and undercover. The codebreakers of Bletchley Park cracked codes that allowed for the interception and exploitation of German intelligence but many took the secret of their wartime activities to the grave. Others put their lives on the line to gather information for their countries, infiltrating other nations' secrets at great personal risk.

The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war.

In the secretive world of World War II espionage, where deception could save lives and a whisper could move armies, one of the most incredible operations ever devised involved a corpse, a briefcase, and a story too bizarre to be fiction. Operation Mincemeat tells the true tale of how British intelligence pulled off a daring trick that convinced Adolf Hitler to send his troops in the wrong direction—by using a dead man carrying false documents.

Admiral Halsey's Story is the personal memoir of Fleet Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr., one of the most dynamic and influential naval commanders of World War II. Co-written with Lieutenant Commander J. Bryan III, the book offers a vivid, first-hand account of Halsey's experiences—from his early days in the U.S. Navy to his pivotal leadership in the Pacific Theater.

A record of life in Poland before, during and after World War II. The memoir not only conveys personal experiences, but also explores momentous happenings of the time throughout Europe.

Ab April 1943 gab es den Block 10 in Auschwitz. Dort wurden medizinische Versuche an rund 800 Frauen vorgenommen, von denen über ein Drittel die Lagerzeit überstanden. Im Stammlager Auschwitz, inmitten eines Männer-KZ, ließ die SS-Lagerleitung Anfang 1943 ein zweistöckiges Gebäude, den Block 10, vom übrigen Gelände abtrennen. In ihm wurden jüdische Frauen eingesperrt, meist mehr als 400, auf engstem Raum.

World War I wasn't just a war between empires. It was a turning point for humanity. It reshaped borders, destroyed monarchies, introduced weapons the world had never seen, and left millions dead. But beyond the trenches, treaties, and tanks, it was fought by people and entire nations struggling to survive. This isn’t just a timeline of dates and battles. This is the human story of the Great War—told with compassion, clarity, and historical depth.

“It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!” So declared Confederate General Robert E. Lee on December 13, 1862, during the battle of Fredericksburg as he watched Major John Pelham fight at least five Union batteries with just one lone gun. The dashing and handsome 24-year-old Alabama officer earned the compliments and admiration of his men, the war gods of Virginia (Lee, Jackson, and Stuart), and Southern society—all while helping transform the concept of horse artillery on Civil War battlefields across Virginia and Maryland.

The revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas over seven decades, from 1760 to 1825, created the modern world. Revolutionaries shattered empires, toppled social hierarchies, and birthed a world of republics. But old injustices lingered on and the powerful engines of revolutionary change created new and insidious forms of inequality. In The Age of Revolutions, historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal offers the first narrative history of this entire era.

Alan Turing: The Genius Codebreaker Who Helped Win a War and Paved the Way for Computers is an accessible, compelling exploration of one of the most brilliant and misunderstood figures of the 20th century. Written for curious listeners of all backgrounds, this book unpacks the science, context, and personal struggles behind Turing’s legacy—explaining complex ideas in clear terms and revealing why his influence is still felt in every corner of modern life.

Thousands of miles away from where her son was deployed, a powerful premonition is devastatingly confirmed by a knock on the door from two faceless strangers bearing the news that her son had stepped on an improvised explosive device in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. He had lost both of his legs and suffered multiple other injuries, including partial amputation of all the fingers of his left hand. For forty-eight days she stood at his bedside.

At the height of World War II, five hundred Army flight nurses served with the Army Air Forces as members of thirty-one medical air evacuation squadrons located throughout the world on both the European and Pacific fronts. Their work was not insignificantover one million patients were evacuated by air between January 1943 and May 1945. These specially trained Army nurses took nursing to new heights. Often decorated for their accomplishments, they exemplify the ability of a group of nurses to cope successfully with the challenges of war.