Showing titles in Military

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Midnight, Tuesday 6 June 1944: the beginning of D-Day, the operation to invade Nazi-occupied Western Europe and initiate the final phase of World War II. A vast undertaking, it involved 12,000 aircraft and an amphibious assault of almost 7...

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Israelis awoke to a harrowing reality. Not only were hundreds of rockets being launched from Gaza into Israeli population centers, but the security border had also been breached by several thousand Hamas terrorists. Carnage, not seen since the Second World War, ensued. Elkana Cohen, Captain of an Elite Commando Unit was called, along with thousands of other reservists, to prepare for war. One that will have to ensure nothing less than Israel's survival.

Almost all accounts of D-Day are told from the Allied perspective, with the emphasis on how German resistance was overcome on June 6, 1944. But what was it like to be a German soldier in the bunkers and gun emplacements of the Normandy coast, facing the onslaught of the mightiest seaborne invasion in history? What motivated the German defenders, what were their thought processes - and how did they fight from one strong point to another, among the dunes and fields, on that first cataclysmic day?

The Pathfinders were ordinary men and women from a range of nations who revolutionised the efficiency of the Allies' air campaign over mainland Europe. They elevated Bomber Command—initially the only part of the Allied war effort capable of attacking the heart of Nazi Germany—from an impotent force on the cusp of disintegration in 1942 to one capable of razing whole German cities to the ground in a single night, striking with devastating accuracy, inspiring fear and loathing in Hitler's senior command.

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches...

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Italian Alps to northern Germany, to London, New York, Washington and Tokyo, Victory ’45 tells the story of the extraordinary summer when the greatest conflagration the world had ever known finally came to an end after six surrenders that heralded the Allied...

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most cataclysmic events in world history, profoundly shaping politics, international relations, social patterns, economics and science in the century that followed. It created long-lasting aftershocks which travelled far beyond its geographical borders. How did it happen? What were the sequence of events that led, following the shocking upheaval of the old Romanov order, to a fierce and violent rivalry between a variety of revolutionary factions and the ultimate victory of the Bolsheviks?

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban...

Recruited by British Intelligence to infiltrate the IRA and Sinn Féin during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, they were ‘agents of influence'. With codenames like INFLICTION, STAKEKNIFE, 3007 and CAROL, these spies played a pivotal role in the fight against Irish republicanism. Now, for the first time, some of these agents have emerged from the shadows to tell their compelling stories. Agents of Influence takes you behind the scenes of the secret intelligence war which helped bring the IRA's armed struggle to an end.

A dramatic countdown of the final months of World War II in Europe, The Last 100 Days brings to life the waning power and the ultimate submission of the Third Reich. To reconstruct the tumultuous hundred days between Yalta and the fall of Berlin, John Toland traveled more than 100,000 miles in...

This is the true story of the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain's most significant sea battle, as seen through the smoke-hazed gunports of the fighting ships. In an atmosphere of choking fumes from cannon and musket fire, amid noise so intense it was almost tangible, the crews of the British, French and Spanish ships did their best to carry out their allotted tasks. For over five hours they were in constant danger from a terrifying array of iron and lead missiles fired from enemy guns, as well as the deadly wooden splinters smashed from the ships' hulls by the cannon-balls.

At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness.

In the summer of 2007 the British Army's 662 Squadron deployed its most potent weapons system in combat for the very first time - the iconic Apache attack helicopter. This is the definitive story of the aircraft and of the crew who fly her, and of their baptism of fire in the battle for Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Under the call-sign Ugly, four of the Army Air Corps' finest pilots flew a relentless series of missions during their 100-day deployment, stretching the aircraft, and themselves, to the limit. Apache Dawn recounts these operations.

Brought to you by Penguin. Some years ago a stash of family records was handed down to Michael Palin, among which were photos of an enigmatic young man in army uniform, as well as photos of the same young man as a teenager looking uncomfortable at family gatherings. This, Michael learnt, was his...

The Sunday Times No.1 Bestseller ‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in...

Brought to you by Penguin. A sweeping, original history of the Cold War, from an acclaimed historian of the USSR Why did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? And what led to the spectacular collapse of...

Bloomsbury presents Korea: War Without End by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman, read by Mark Elstob A ground-breaking history of this global conflict including the errors and miscalculations made on both sides. Korea: War Without End examines the stand-off between East and West in Korea that...

NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating...

The story of the Battle of Saipan has it all. Marines at war: on Pacific beaches, in hellish volcanic landscapes in places like Purple Heart Ridge, Death Valley, and Hell's Pocket, under a commander known as "Howlin' Mad." Naval combat: carriers battling carriers from afar, fighters downing Japanese aircraft, submarines sinking carriers. Marine-army rivalry. Fanatical Japanese defense and resistance. A turning point of the Pacific War. James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler of the battle has done.

Drawing on hundreds of declassified official files - many of them previously unpublished - Tim Tate uncovers the largely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted, mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, and several hundred British Fascists who were interned without trial on evidence that they were working on behalf of the enemy. Four were condemned to death; two were executed.