In the decade following the first Gulf War, most observers regarded it as an exemplary effort by the international community to lawfully and forcefully hold a regional aggressor in check. Interpretations have changed with the times. The Gulf War led to the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia, an important contributing cause of the 9/11 attacks. The war also led to a long obsession with Saddam Hussein that culminated in a second, far longer, American-led war with Iraq. In Into the Desert, Jeffrey Engel has gathered an all-star cast of contributors to reevaluate the first Gulf War: Michael Gordon of the New York Times; Sir Lawrence Freedman, former foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair; Ambassador Ryan Crocker; Middle East specialist Shibley Telhami; and Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Engel and his contributors examine the war's origins, the war itself, and its long-term impact on international relations. All told, Into the Desert offers an astute reassessment of one of the most momentous events in the last quarter century.

In the summer of 1781, during the seventh year of the Revolutionary War, the allied American and French armies of Generals Washington and Rochambeau were encamped at Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont and White Plains. Washington chose lower Westchester for encampment because of its proximity to the British forces which controlled Manhattan, and which Washington intended to attack.On August 14 Washington and Rochambeau received a communication from French Admiral de Grasse, who suggested a joint sea and land campaign against General Cornwallis's British troops in Virginia. Washington risked all on this march. Its success depended on precise timing and coordination of multiple naval and land movements including those of Generals Washington, Rochambeau and Lafayette, and of French Admirals de Grasse and Barras. Success also required the utmost secrecy, and an elaborate deception was prepared by Washington in order to convince the British that Manhattan remained the target of the allied armies. Two months later, at Yorktown, Virginia, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to the American and French forces.

The Isle os are not nearly as well-known as the Cajuns or the Creoles or the French, but they have had an undeniable and lasting impact on this state and the south. Adaptable, resourceful, and undeniably proud, they have shaped their destinies against the odds. As their settlements failed, they rebuilt. As the governments changed from Spanish to French to American, they endured. Many campaigned in the American Revolution; they secured victory in the famous Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812; and as they began to understand the surrounding marshes, they learned to make their livings from trapping and fishing and pass on their wisdom and culture through oral tradition. They shaped the development of the state but are too often ignored, even in local history.

In Hiding tells the story of a Jewish family of four when a Dutch couple offered to hide them from Nazi atrocities during the Second World War. The couple agreed that they would hide this family for a large sum of money, thinking that the war would soon end. When it appeared that the war would last much longer than first anticipated, the hostess threatened and physically and mentally abused the foursome. In Hiding relates the cruelty that this family had to endure not from the Nazis directly, but from their own neighbours during more than two years of persecution.

Tennessee's Thirteenth Union Cavalry was a unit composed mostly of amateur soldiers that eventually turned undisciplined boys into seasoned fighters. At the outbreak of the Civil War, East Tennessee was torn between its Unionist tendencies and the surrounding Confederacy. The result was the persecution of the "home Yankees" by Confederate sympathizers. Rather than quelling Unionist fervor, this oppression helped East Tennessee contribute an estimated thirty thousand troops to the North. Some of those troops joined the "Loyal Thirteenth" in Stoneman's raid and in pursuit of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Join author Melanie Storie as she recounts the harrowing narrative of an often-overlooked piece of Civil War history.

The first political history of the Second World War, of building the Grand Alliance to defeat Hitler, by the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Appeasing Hitler.

After the fall of France in June 1940, only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination.

By 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place. Yet it was an improbable and incongruous coalition, divided by ideology and politics and riven with mistrust and deceit. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were partners in the fight to defeat Hitler, yet they were also rivals who disagreed on strategy, imperialism and the future of liberated Europe. Only by looking at their points of conflict, as well as of co-operation, are we able to understand the course of the war and world that developed in its aftermath.

Allies at War is a fast-paced, narrative history, based on material drawn from over a hundred archives. Using vivid, first-hand accounts and unpublished diaries, we enter the rooms where the critical decisions were made while going beyond the confines of the Grand Alliance to examine, among other themes, the doomed Anglo-French alliance, fractious relations with General de Gaulle and the Free French, and interactions with Poland, Greece and Nationalist China.

Ambitious and compelling, revealing the political drama behind the military events, Allies at War offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.

In the early days of the Civil War, Richmond was declared the capital of the Confederacy, and until now, countless stories from its tenure as the Southern headquarters have remained buried. Mary E. Walker, a Union doctor and feminist, was once held captive in the city for refusing to wear proper women's clothing. A coffee substitute factory exploded under intriguing circumstances. Many Confederate soldiers, when in the trenches of battle, thumbed through the pages of Hugo's "Les Miserables." Author Brian Burns reveals these and many more curious tales of Civil War Richmond.

Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku made a vow to smile every day and now believes he is the ‘happiest man on earth’. In his inspirational memoir, he pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story and sharing his wisdom.

Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you.

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country.

The Happiest Man on Earth is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.

When Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, no one doubted that a battle to control the Mississippi River was imminent. Throughout the war, the Federals pushed their way up the river. Every port and city seemed to fall against the force of the Union Navy. The capitol was forced to retreat from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. Many of the smaller towns, like Bayou Sara and Donaldsonville, were nearly shelled completely off the map. It was not until the Union reached Port Hudson that the Confederates had a fighting chance to keep control of the mighty Mississippi. They fought long and hard, under supplied and under manned, but ultimately the Union prevailed.

b>'ROBERT FISK HAS BEEN REPORTING FROM THE MIDDLE EAST WITH INCOMPARABLE DEPTH AND UNDERSTANDING…AND EXTRAORDINARY COURAGE' NOAM CHOMSKY

In this final work from renowned journalist Robert Fisk, he picks up reporting on the Middle East where his internationally bestselling The Great War of Civilisation left off.

From the Arab uprisings and the Syrian civil war to Israel’s conflicts with Palestine and Lebanon, Fisk condemns the West’s ongoing hypocrisy and interference while revealing the horrific truth of life on the ground. Unafraid to criticise authority and unpick complex truths, hecreates a compelling narrative of passionate and engaging journalism, historical analysis and eyewitness reporting.

With a Postscript by Nelofer Pazira-Fisk and a foreword by Patrick Cockburn, Night of Power delivers an essential and prophetic account of the last twenty years, which exposes the inescapable consequences of colonial oppression and violence in the Middle East.

‘This is a masterly work by a unique and gifted “historian of the present”, who was unafraid to criticise authority while revealing the horrific realities of life and death on the ground’ Conor O’Clery, Irish Times

‘Every sentence of Robert Fisk radiates his loathe of wars and the inevitable dehumanization they produce, which makes his (sadly) last book an everlasting warning, beyond its value as a meticulous historical recount and analysis of today's events’ Amira Hass, journalist, Haaretz

'Fisk's reporting is clear-eyed and unflinching, a model for what journalists should aspire to practice in their ever more important and widely threatened craft' Anthony Arnove, editor, Iraq Under Siege and author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

‘I was at the funeral of a friend of mine, in Kilternan cemetery … I came across Robert Fisk’s grave. Someone has to bear witness to the unspeakable, and he did it, whatever the cost to himself’ Neil Jordan, film director and writer