How many lives can one man save? Never enough, Horton realized. As his ship backed away from Smyrna's wharf, he could better see the helpless, teeming crowd on the waterfront trapped between the sea and a raging inferno. He was not consoled by rescuing his shipload of refugees, nor by the many other Christian, Jewish, and Muslim lives he had saved during his service as American consul. His focus was on the people before him threatened with fire, rape, and massacre. Their persecution, he later said, made him ashamed he "belonged to the human race." Helping them would not be easy, however. His superiors were blocking humanitarian aid and covering up atrocities with fake news and disinformation to win Turkish approval for American access to oil. When Horton decried their duplicity and hard-heartedness, they conspired to destroy his reputation. Undaunted, Horton pursued his cause until it went to the President and then Congress for decisions that would set the course for America's emergence as a world power. At stake was the outcome of WWI, the stability and liberality of the Middle East, and the likelihood of more genocide.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was one of the defining moments in the history of the modern Middle East. Yet its co-creator, Sir Mark Sykes, had far more involvement in British Middle East strategy during World War I than the Agreement for which he is now most remembered. Between 1915 and 1916, Sykes was Lord Kitchener's agent at home and abroad, operating out of the War Office until the war secretary's death at sea in 1916. Following that, from 1916 to 1919 he worked at the Imperial War Cabinet, the War Cabinet Secretariat and, finally, as an advisor to the Foreign Office. The full extent of Sykes's work and influence has previously not been told. Moreover, the general impression given of him is at variance with the facts. Sykes led the negotiations with the Zionist leadership in the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, which he helped to write, and promoted their cause to achieve what he sought for a pro-British post-war Middle East peace settlement, although he was not himself a Zionist. Likewise, despite claims he championed the Arab cause, there is little proof of this other than general rhetoric mainly for public consumption. On the contrary, there is much evidence he routinely exhibited a complete lack of empathy with the Arabs. In this book, Michael Berdine examines the life of this impulsive and headstrong young British aristocrat who helped formulate many of Britain's policies in the Middle East that are responsible for much of the instability that has affected the region ever since.

Between 1919 and 1923, Ireland was engulfed by violence as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a guerrilla campaign against the British state and later fellow Irishmen and women in pursuit of an Irish Republic. Police barracks and government offices were attacked and burned, soldiers and policemen were killed and the economic and social life of the country was dislocated. Britain itself was a theatre in the war too. 'In the heart of enemy lines', as one IRA leader put it, cities such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow and their environs saw the establishment of IRA companies, Irish Republican Brotherhood circles, Cumann na mBan branches and Na Fianna Eireann troops. Composed of Irish emigrants and the descendants of emigrants, these organizations worked to help their comrades across the Irish Sea. Their most important activity was gunrunning, acquiring and smuggling weapons to Ireland. In November 1920, setting fire to warehouses and timber yards in Liverpool, they launched a campaign of violence. Meanwhile, mass-membership organizations such as the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain and Sinn Fein sought to persuade the British public of Ireland's right to independence. Republican leaders such as Michael Collins, Rory O'Connor and Liam Mellows took a keen interest in these exploits. Making extensive use of archival sources and memoirs, The IRA in Britain is the first book to study this little known aspect of the Irish Revolutionary period. Tracing the history of the Irish Volunteers in Britain from their establishment in 1914 and participation in the Easter Rising two years later, through the weapons' smuggling activities and violent operations of the War of Independence to the bitter divisions of the Civil War and the response of the authorities, The IRA in Britain highlights the important role played by those outside of Ireland in the Revolution.

The early 20th-century world experienced a growth in international cooperation. Yet the dominant historical view of the period has long been one of national, military, and social divisions rather than connections. International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century revises this historical consensus by providing a more focused and detailed analysis of the many ways in which people interacted with each other across borders in the early decades of the 20th century. It devotes particular attention to private and non-governmental actors. Daniel Gorman focuses on international cooperation, international social movements, various forms of cultural internationalism, imperial and anti-imperial internationalism, and the growth of cosmopolitan ideas. The book incorporates a non-Western focus alongside the transatlantic core of early 20th-century internationalism. It interweaves analyses of international anti-colonial networks, ideas emanating from non-Western sites of influence such as Japan, China and Turkey, the emergence of networks of international indigenous peoples in resistance to a state-centric international system, and diaspora and transnational ethno-cultural-religious identity networks.

The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, dazzled with its new rainbow-colored electric lights. It showcased an array of wonders, like daredevils attempting to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or the "Animal King" putting the smallest woman in the world and also terrifying animals on display. But the thrill-seeking spectators little suspected that an assassin walked the fairgrounds, waiting for President William McKinley to arrive. In Margaret Creighton's hands, the result is "a persuasive case that the fair was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad, at the onset of the American Century" (Howard Schneider, Wall Street Journal).

Before the First World War there existed an intellectual turmoil in Britain as great as any in Germany, France or Russia, as the debates over Nietzsche and eugenics in the context of early modernism reveal. With the rise of fascism after 1918, these debates became more ideologically driven, with science and vitalist philosophy being hailed in some quarters as saviours from bourgeois decadence, vituperated in others as heralding the onset of barbarism. Breeding Superman looks at several of the leading Nietzscheans and eugenicists, and challenges the long-cherished belief that British intellectuals were fundamentally uninterested in race. The result is a study of radical ideas which are conventionally written out of histories of the politics and culture of the period.

Van al die gebeure in die Kaapkolonie gedurende die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog het die teregstelling van Hans Lötter, asook dié van kmdt. Gideon Scheepers, die meeste emosie onder Afrikaners ontketen. Lötter en sy mederebelle in die Kolonie het die verbeelding van die plaaslike bevolking aangegryp en die Britte maande lank hoofbrekens besorg. Sy gevangeneming, verhoor en teregstelling deur ’n Britse vuurpeloton op Middelburg, Kaap, het groot woede en verontwaardiging veroorsaak en hom verewig as Boeremartelaar in die Afrikaner-volksoorleweringe. Nou word sy boeiende verhaal vir die eerste keer volledig vertel.

Again available in paperback is Eric Sevareid's widely acclaimed Not So Wild a Dream. In this brilliant first-person account of a young journalist's experience during World War II, Sevareid records both the events of the war and the development of journalistic strategies for covering international affairs. He also recalls vividly his own youth in North Dakota, his decision to study journalism, and his early involvement in radio reporting during the beginnings of World War II.

Soldiers disguised as a herd of cows, cork bath mats for troops crossing streams and a tank with a piano attachment for camp concerts are just some of the absurd inventions to be found in this book of cartoons designed to keep spirits up during the Second World War. These intricate comic drawings poke gentle fun at both the instruments of war and the indignity of the air-raid shelter in Heath Robinson's inimitable style.