In May 1944, with American forces closing in on the Japanese mainland, the Fifth Fleet Amphibious Force was preparing to invade Saipan. Control of this island would put enemy cities squarely within range of the B-29 bomber. The navy had assembled a fleet of landing ship tanks (LSTs) in the West Loch section of Pearl Harbor. On May 21, an explosion tore through the calm afternoon sky, spreading fire and chaos through the ordnance-packed vessels. When the fires had been brought under control, six LSTs had been lost, many others were badly damaged, and more than 500 military personnel had been killed or injured. To ensure the success of those still able to depart for the invasion--miraculously, only one day late--the navy at once issued a censorship order, which has kept this disaster from public scrutiny for seventy years.
"The Second Pearl Harbor" is the first book to tell the full story of what happened on that fateful day. Military historian Gene Salecker recounts the events and conditions leading up to the explosion, then re-creates the drama directly afterward: men swimming through flaming oil, small craft desperately trying to rescue the injured, and subsequent explosions throwing flaming debris everywhere. With meticulous attention to detail the author explains why he and other historians believe that the official explanation for the cause of the explosion, that a mortar shell was accidentally detonated, is wrong.
This in-depth account of a little-known incident adds to our understanding of the dangers during World War II, even far from the front, and restores a missing chapter to history.

From Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable treasures they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. In "Hitler's Holy Relics, "bestselling author Sidney Kirkpatrick tells the riveting and never-before-told true story of how an American college professor turned Army sleuth recovered these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich before they could become a rallying point in the creation of a Fourth and equally unholy Reich.
Anticipating the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler had ordered a top-secret bunker carved deep into the bedrock beneath Nurnberg castle. Inside the well-guarded chamber was a specially constructed vault that held the plundered treasures Hitler valued the most: the Spear of Destiny (reputed to have been used to pierce Christ's side while he was on the cross) and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, ancient artifacts steeped in medieval mysticism and coveted by world rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon. But as Allied bombers rained devastation upon Nurnberg and the U.S. Seventh Army prepared to invade the city Hitler called "the soul of the Nazi Party," five of the most precious relics, all central to the coronation ceremony of a would-be Holy Roman Emperor, vanished from the vault. Who took them? And why? The mystery remained unsolved for months after the war's end, until the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, ordered Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born art historian on leave from U.C. Berkeley, to hunt down the missing treasures.
To accomplish his mission, Horn must revisit the now-rubble-strewn landscape of his youth and delve into the ancient legends and arcane mysticism surrounding the antiquities that Hitler had looted in his quest for world domination. Horn searches for clues in the burnt remains of Himmler's private castle and follows the trail of neo-Nazi "Teutonic Knights" charged with protecting a vast hidden fortune in plundered gold and other treasure. Along the way, Horn has to confront his own demons: how members of his family and former academic colleagues subverted scholarly research to help legitimize Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy and the Master Race. What Horn discovers on his investigative odyssey is so explosive that his final report will remain secret for decades.
Drawing on unpublished interrogation and intelligence reports, as well as on diaries, letters, journals, and interviews in the United States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing story with cinematic detail and reveals-- for the first time--how a failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.

The brand-new instalment in Fenella J. Miller's bestselling Goodwill House series.August 1940 As Autumn approaches, Lady Joanna Harcourt is preparing for new guests at Goodwill House - land girls, Sally, Daphne and Charlie. Sally, a feisty blonde from the East End, has never seen a cow before, but she's desperate to escape London and her horrible ex, Dennis. And although the hours are long and the work hard, Sal quickly becomes good friends with the other girls Daphne and Charlie and enjoys life at Goodwill House. Until Dennis reappears threatening to drag her back to London. Sal fears her life as a land girl is over, just as she finally felt worthy. But Lady Joanna has other ideas and a plan to keep Sal safe and doing the job she loves. Don't miss the next heart-breaking instalment in Fenella J. Miller's beautiful Goodwill House series. Praise for Fenella J. Miller: 'Curl up in a chair with Fenella J Miller's characters and lose yourself in another time and another place.' Lizzie Lane 'Engaging characters and setting which whisks you back to the home front of wartime Britain. A fabulous series!' Jean Fullerton

This volume assembles the papers presented at the conference The International Context of the Galician Language Brotherhoods and the Nationality Question in Interwar Europe (Council of Galician Culture, Santiago de Compostela, October 2016). The different contributions, written by historians, political scientists and linguists, shed new light on the political development of the nationality question in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath, covering theoretical developments and debates, social mobilization and cultural perspectives. They also address the topic from different scales, blending the global and transnational outlook with the view from below, from the local contexts, with particular attention to peripheral areas, whilst East European and West European nationalities are dealt with on an equal footing, covering from Iberian Galicia to the Caucasus. Contributors are: Bence Bari, Stefan Berger, Miguel Cabo, Stefan Dyroff, Lourenzo Fernandez Prieto, Johannes Kabatek, Joep Leerssen, Ramon Maiz, Xose M. Nunez Seixas, Malte Rolf, Ramon Villares, and Francesca Zantedeschi.

Prospect Top 50 Thinker of 2021 British Academy Book Prize Finalist PROSE Award Finalist "Provocative, elegantly written." -Fara Dabhoiwala, New York Review of Books "Demonstrates how a broad rethinking of political issues becomes possible when Western ideals and practices are examined from the vantage point of Asia and Africa." -Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books In case after case around the globe-from Israel to Sudan-the colonial state and the nation-state have been constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. The model emerged in America, where genocide and internment on reservations created a permanent native minority. In Europe, this template would be used both by the Nazis and the Allies. Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this process. Mahmood Mamdani points to inherent limitations in the legal solution attempted at Nuremberg. Political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice but a rethinking of the political community to include victims and perpetrators, bystanders and beneficiaries. Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, he calls on us to delink the nation from the state so as to ensure equal political rights for all who live within its boundaries. "A deeply learned account of the origins of our modern world...Mamdani rejects the current focus on human rights as the means to bring justice to the victims of this colonial and postcolonial bloodshed. Instead, he calls for a new kind of political imagination...Joining the ranks of Hannah Arendt's Imperialism, Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and Edward Said's Orientalism, this book is destined to become a classic text of postcolonial studies and political theory." -Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? "A masterwork of historical comparison and razor-sharp political analysis, with grave lessons about the pitfalls of forgetting, moralizing, or criminalizing this violence. Mamdani also offers a hopeful rejoinder in a revived politics of decolonization." -Karuna Mantena, Columbia University "A powerfully original argument, one that supplements political analysis with a map for our political future." -Faisal Devji, University of Oxford