Winner of the Blogger's Book Prize, 2021 Shortlisted for the People's Book Prize, 2021 Winner of Best Literary Fiction and Best Multicultural Fiction at American Book Fest International Book Awards, 2021 'An epic account of Viet Nam's painful 20th-century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling... Moving and riveting.' Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer Selected as a Best Book of 2020 by NB Magazine * BookBrowse * Buzz Magazine * NPR * Washington Independent Review of Books * Real Simple * She Reads * A Hindu's View * Thoughts from a Page One family, two generations of women and a war that will change their lives forever Ha Noi, 1972. Huong and her grandmother, Tran Dieu Lan, cling to one another in their improvised shelter as American bombs fall around them. For Tran Dieu Lan, forced to flee the family farm with her six children decades earlier as the Communist government rose to power in the North, this experience is horribly familiar. Seen through the eyes of these two unforgettable women, The Mountains Sing captures their defiance and determination, hope and unexpected joy. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen's richly lyrical debut weaves between the lives of a grandmother and granddaughter to paint a unique picture of a country pushed to breaking point, and a family who refuse to give up. 'Devastating... From the French and Japanese occupations to the Indochina wars, The Great Hunger, land reform and the Vietnam War, it's a story of resilience, determination, family and hope in a country blighted by pain.' Refinery29

Von Moltke and 'quick victory': Jellicoe and the Battle of Jutland: Petain and the wave of mutinies: Ludendorff and the 1918 offensives. Four key men, four key moments in the Great War. Corelli Barnett, in his famous study, writes with brilliant insight about these flawed men grappling with events that were outside their comprehension. In his preface he writes thus: 'The Theme of this book is the decisive effect of individual human character on history. The background, in sharpest contrast, is a sudden and violent transition to mass collectivised life - to twentieth century industrial civilization. The principal actors are four national commanders-in-chief: two German, one Frenchman, one Englishman. Theirs was the novel task of directing these new and terrifying forces of mass powering battle. Each had been born and bred in the last century; each belonged to a highly conservative profession. Their abilities and defects reflected and illustrated those of their countries. For the historian, with the priceless gift of hindsight, it is moving and fascinating, therefore, to study these men locked in struggle with events greater than themselves; to see their moments of clarity and prophesy, of optimistic self-delusion, of uncertainty, of despair. Each in turn, as commander-in-chief, bore his nation's sword at a period when the course of the war pivoted on his judgement and will: four actors in a continental tragedy of death and re-birth.'

In 1914, the Associated Newspapers sent correspondent Herbert Corey to Europe on the day Great Britain declared war on Germany. During the Great War that followed, Corey reported from France, Britain, and Germany, visiting the German lines on both the western and eastern fronts. He also reported from Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and Serbia. When the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Corey defied the rules of the American Expeditionary Forces and crossed into Germany. He covered the Paris Peace Conference the following year. No other foreign correspondent matched the longevity of his reporting during World War I. Until recently, however, his unpublished memoir lay largely unnoticed among his papers in the Library of Congress. With publication of Herbert Corey's Great War, coeditors Peter Finn and John Maxwell Hamilton reestablish Corey's name in the annals of American war reporting. As a correspondent, he defies easy comparison. He approximates Ernie Pyle in his sympathetic interest in the American foot soldier, but he also told stories about troops on the other side and about noncombatants. He is especially illuminating on the obstacles reporters faced in conveying the story of the Great War to Americans. As his memoir makes clear, Corey didn't believe he was in Europe to serve the Allies. He viewed himself as an outsider, one who was deeply ambivalent about the entry of the United States into the war. His idiosyncratic, opinionated, and very American voice makes for compelling reading.

Do Not Disturb is a dramatic recasting of the modern history of Africa’s Great Lakes region, an area blighted by the greatest genocide of the twentieth century. This bold retelling, vividly sourced by direct testimony from key participants, tears up the traditional script.

In the old version, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrows a genocidal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that makes Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. The new version examines afresh questions which dog the recent past: Why do so many ex-rebels scoff at official explanations of who fired the missile that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi? Why didn’t the mass killings end when the rebels took control? Why did those same rebels, victory secured, turn so ruthlessly on one another?

Michela Wrong uses the story of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s murder.

Many aspects of Britain's involvement in World War Two only slowly emerged from beneath the barrage of official secrets and popular misconception. One of the most controversial issues, the internment of 'enemy aliens' (and also British subjects) on the Isle of Man, received its first thorough examination in this remarkable account by Connery Chappell of life in the Manx camps between 1940 and 1945. At the outbreak of war there were approximately 75,000 people of Germanic origin living in Britain, and Whitehall decided to set up Enemy Alien Tribunals to screen these 'potential security risks'. The entry of Italy into the war almost doubled the workload. The first tribunal in February 1940 considered only 569 cases as high enough risks to warrant internment. The Isle of Man was chosen as the one place sufficiently removed from areas of military importance, but by the end of the year the number of enemy aliens on the island had reached 14,000. With the use of diaries, broadsheets, newspapers and personal testimonies, the author shows how a traditional holiday isle was transformed into an internment camp. of earning extra income. Eventually the internees took part in local farm work, ran their own camp newspapers and even set up internal businesses. With inmates of the calibre of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Lord Weidenfeld, Sir Charles Forte, Professor Geoffrey Elton and R.W. 'Tiny' Rowland, the life of the camp quickly took on a busy and constructive air; but the picture was not always such a happy one, as angry disputes flared between Fascist inmates and their Jewish neighbours, and a dangerous riot forced the intervention of the Home Office. Even now, there remains the persistent question never settled satisfactorily. Were the internments ever justified or even consistent?

In Our Veterans, Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, and Jasper Craven explore the physical, emotional, social, economic, and psychological impact of military service and the problems that veterans face when they return to civilian life. The authors critically examine the role of advocacy organizations, philanthropies, corporations, and politicians who purport to be "pro-veteran." They describe the ongoing debate about the cost, quality, and effectiveness of healthcare provided or outsourced by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). They also examine generational divisions and political tensions among veterans, as revealed in the tumultuous events of 2020, from Black Lives Matter protests to the Trump-Biden presidential contest. Frank and revealing, Our Veterans proposes a new agenda for veterans affairs linking service provision to veterans to the quest for broader social programs benefiting all Americans.

The Battle of Britain was the decisive air campaign fought over Southern England in the summer and autumn of 1940. From 10th July until 31st October 1940 Fighter Command aircrews from over 16 nations fought and died repelling the Luftwaffe. Discover tales of courage, bravery and a host of fascinating, and little-known facts about the combatants, leaders and strategies of both sides. Find out about propaganda employed by both sides to try and influence the battle, the Dowding system relaying information to the pilots in their fighter's and the classic 1969 film starring Sir Laurence Oliver. This absorbing book is published to coincide with the commemorations surrounding the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain 2020. "The Amazing and Extraordinary Facts series" presents interesting, surprising and little-known facts and stories about a wide range of topics which are guaranteed to inform, absorb and entertain in equal measure.

While engineers played a critical role in the performance of both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, few historians have examined their experiences or impact. Larry J. Daniel's Engineering in the Confederate Heartland fills a gap in that historiography by analyzing the accomplishments of these individuals working for the Confederacy in the vast region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, commonly referred to as the Western Theater. Though few in number, the members of the western engineer corps were vital in implementing Confederate strategy and tactics. Most Confederate engineers possessed little to no military training, transitioning from the civilian tasks of water drainage, railroad construction, and land surveys to overseeing highly technical war-related projects. Their goal was simple in mission but complex in implementation: utilize their specialized skills to defeat, or at least slow, the Union juggernaut. The geographical diversity of the Heartland further complicated their charge. The expansive area featured elevations reaching over six thousand feet, sandstone bluffs cut by running valleys on the Cumberland Plateau, the Nashville basin's thick cedar glades and rolling farmland, and the wind-blown silt soil of the Loess Plains of the Mississippi Valley. Regardless of the topography, engineers encountered persistent flooding in all sectors. Daniel's study challenges the long-held thesis that the area lacked adept professionals. Engineers' expertise and labor, especially in the construction of small bridges and the laying of pontoons, often proved pivotal. Lacking sophisticated equipment and technical instruments, they nonetheless achieved numerous successes: the Union army never breached the defenses at Vicksburg or Atlanta, and by late 1864, the Army of Tennessee boasted a pontoon train sufficient to span the Tennessee River. Daniel uncovers these and other essential contributions to the war effort made by the Confederacy's western engineers.

'Of all branches of human endeavour, diplomacy is the most protean.' That is how Harold Nicolson begins this book. It is an apt opening. The Paris Conference of 1919, attended by thirty-two nations, had the supremely challenging task of attempting to bring about a lasting peace after the global catastrophe of the Great War.

Harold Nicolson was a member of the British delegation. His book is in two parts. In the first he provides an account of the conference, in the second his diary covering his six month stint. There is a piquant counterpoise between the two. Of his diary he writes, 'I should wish it to be read as people read the reminiscences of a subaltern in the trenches. There is the same distrust of headquarters; the same irritation against the staff-officer who interrupts; the same belief that one's own sector is the centre of the battle-front; the same conviction that one is, with great nobility of soul, winning the war quite single-handed.' The diary ends with prophetic disillusionment, 'To bed, sick of life.'

As a first-hand account of one of the most important events shaping the modern world this book remains a classic.

The Tree of Gernika: a Field Study of Modern War was published in 1938. It is G. L. Steer's masterpiece. Martha Gellhorn famously wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt:

""

""'You must read a book by a man names Steer: it is called The Tree of Gernika. It is about the fight of the Basques - he's the London Times man - and no better book has come out of the war and he says well all the things I have tried to say to you the times I saw you, after Spain. It is beautifully written and true, and few books are like that, and fewer still deal with war. Pleas get it.'

""

""As Paul Preston says in his "We Saw Spain Die," 'Martha Gellhorn's judgement has more than stood the test of time.'

""

""In his introduction, Nick Rankin writes.' "The Tree of Gernika" tells how Euzkadi, the democratic republic that the Basques created in their green homeland by the Bay of Biscay, fought for freedom and decency in an atrocious civil war. After a year of struggle, blockaded by sea, bombed from the air, fighting against overwhelming odds in their own hill, the Basques in the end lost to Franco's forces - but they lost honourably, without resorting to murder, torture and treachery.'

""

""It was Steer who alerted the world to the destruction of Gernika (Basque spelling), Guernica (Spanish spelling). It was the most important dispatch of his life, run by both "The Times "and "The New York Times."

Nick Rankin rightly describes "The Tree of Gernika" as 'a masterpiece of narrative history and eyewitness reporting by someone close to the key events . . .'