Showing titles in 20th Century

Brought to you by Penguin. One of the last great untold stories of the Holocaust, The Survivor is an astonishing account of one man's unbreakable spirit, unshakeable faith, and extraordinary courage in the face of evil. At only sixteen years old, Josef Lewkowicz became a number, prisoner 85314...

'This captivating account . . . is the story of an ordinary soldier, but an extraordinary man. I commend this book most warmly.' Richard Dannatt, General The Lord Dannatt GCB CBE MC DL, Chief of the General Staff 2006-9 'The amazing account of a young man, Neville 'Timber' Wood, who, despite...

Bloomsbury presents Hubris: The Origins of Russia's War Against Ukraine, written and read by Jonathan Haslam. On February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukraine conflict that began eight years earlier. But the roots of the conflict began long...

Brought to you by Penguin. The definitive new history of East Germany by an acclaimed historian In 1990, a country disappeared. For the previous forty-one years, East Germany had existed in Western minds as more of a metaphor than a place, more of a grey communist blur than a land of real people...

In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur. Yet it was also a city where poverty and disease were rife. For its inhabitants, such contradictions and diversity were the defining experience of the next century of dazzling change. In the worlds of work and popular culture, politics and crime, through war, immigration and sexual revolution, Jerry White’s richly detailed and captivating history shows how the city shaped their lives and how it in turn was shaped by them.

Martin Gilbert, author of the multivolume biography of Winston Churchill and other brilliant works of history, chronicles world events year by year, from the dawn of aviation to the flourishing technology age, taking us through World War I to the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt as president of the United States and Hider as chancellor of Germany.

Every major battle fought on the Western Front, from the First Battle of Ypres to the Second Battle of the Marne, was fought by Allied armies that were multi-racial and multi-ethnic. Yet from the moment the guns fell silent the role of non-white soldiers was forgotten. The World's War brings to life the searing experiences of the hundreds of thousands of non-white troops whose bravery contributed to the final Allied victory.

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every...

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...

In 1929, a 22-year-old maverick named Frank Whittle - a self-taught aeronautical obsessive and risk-takingly brilliant RAF pilot - presented a blueprint for a revolutionary, jet-powered aircraft engine to the Air Ministry. His idea had the potential to change the course of history, but it was summarily rejected. In this meticulously researched biography, Duncan Campbell-Smith charts Whittle's stoic efforts to build his jet engine in the interwar years.

The birth of an alliance that changed the course of history. From the bestselling author of Fortress Malta this is the second book in the Mediterranean war trilogy. This audiobook looks afresh at the conflict in Northern Africa, focusing for the first time on the involvement of the US and the...

It is 1940, and the Final Solution is about to begin. The Nazis have occupied The Netherlands, but resistance is growing and two Jewish sisters - Janny and Lien Brilleslijper - are risking their lives to save those being hunted, through their clandestine safehouse 'The High Nest'. It becomes one of the most important safehouses in the country, but when the house and its occupants are betrayed, the most terrifying time of the sisters' lives begins. This is the beginning of the end. 

A detailed and comprehensive study of the carrier formations of the Pacific War, including their origins, development, and key battles from the Coral Sea, through Midway and Guadalcanal to the battle of the Philippine Sea.

The Pharmacist of Auschwitz is the little-known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania, who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius's reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder 20 years after the end of the war.

In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and report from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report....

In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. In 1917 the world changed forever. One of the most influential and contentious events in recent history, the Russian Revolution unleashed the greatest political experiment ever conducted, one which continues to influence both Eastern and...

The vivid, fast-paced account of the siege of Khe Sanh told through the eyes of the men who lived it. For seventy-seven days in 1968, amid fears that America faced its own disastrous Dien Bien Phu, six thousand US Marines held off thirty thousand North Vietnamese Army regulars at the remote mountain stronghold called Khe Sanh. It was the biggest battle of the Vietnam War, with sharp ground engagements, devastating artillery duels, and massive US air strikes.

Kurt Schindler was an impossible man. His daughter Meriel spent her adult life trying to keep him at bay. Kurt had made extravagant claims about their family history. Were they really related to Franz Kafka and Oscar Schindler, of Schindler's List fame? Or Hitler's Jewish doctor - Dr Bloch? What...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .' The Third Battle of Ypres, ending in a...