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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence
Why did Abraham Lincoln sneak into Washington for his inauguration? was the Gettysburg Address written on the back of an envelope? Where did the Underground Railroad run? Did General Sherman really say, "War is Hell"? If you can't answer these questions, you're not alone. Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events - Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and much more. Drawing on moving eyewitness accounts, Davis includes a wealth of "hidden history" about the roles played by women and African Americans before and during the war, along with lesser-known facts that will enthrall even learned Civil War buffs. Vivid, informative, and hugely entertaining, Don't Know Much About the Civil War is the only book you'll ever need on "the war that never ended."
The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the
Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British
jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most
successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106
Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day
Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two
ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before
the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with
the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was
on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts
through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these
three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and
execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest
Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph
and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to
Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of
seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book
uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in
Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the
escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued
by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men
who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven
countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of
the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.
In the wake of the Second World War, Samuel Beckett wrote some of
the most significant literary works of the 20th century. This is
the first full-length historical study to examine the far-reaching
impact of the war on Beckett's creative and intellectual
sensibilities. Drawing on a substantial body of archival material,
including letters, manuscripts, diaries and interviews, as well as
a wealth of historical sources, this book explores Beckett's
writing in a range of political contexts, from the racist dogma of
Nazism and aggressive traditionalism of the Vichy regime to Irish
neutrality censorship and the politics of recovery in the French
Fourth Republic. Along the way, Samuel Beckett and the Second World
War casts new light on Beckett's political commitments and his
concepts of history as they were formed during Europe's darkest
hour.
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