'The best one-volume study of Churchill yet available.' David Cannadine, "Observer"

'Magisterial.' Vernon Bogdanor, "New Statesman"

'A tour de force... A masterly chronicle of Churchill as a domestic figure rather than as the bulldog wartime leader, and one of the most subtle portraits of him as a politician. Addison revises the view of Churchill as uninterested and out of his depth in domestic affairs, painting instead a nuanced picture of a canny parliamentarian. Churchill changed parties twice but managed to accomplish the change, writes Addison, 'with exceptional dexterity', making it appear as if he were maintaining his principles while the parties changed theirs... Addison's most interesting assertion is that the rise of Hitler saved Churchill from drifting into right-wing irrelevance. Most impressively, Addison doesn't settle for easy classifications, admitting that 'Churchill... is a man of whom almost everything that can be said is true in part.'' "Kirkus Review"

'An excellent book.' Angus Calder, London Review of Books

First published in 1985, based on an acclaimed BBC TV series, Paul Addison's "Now The War is Over" examines the great changes in British society that followed hard upon what had been the most destructive war ever known: years of recovery and reform, as Britain was reshaped by high ideals and a collective desire to enjoy the fruits and opportunities of peacetime.

Labour was elected in 1945 on a wave of what Addison calls 'Forties collectivism.' Soon Britons would have the benefits of Beveridge's Welfare State, new housing, secondary education for all and, in July 1948, the dawning of the National Health Service. But new interests in consumerism and the pursuit of affluence were also emerging and, as Addison shows in this rich and fascinating study, would prove just as influential as the efforts of government.

It was, of course, the Battle of Britain, or rather its conclusion, that prompted one of Winston Churchill's most memorable pieces of oratory that has its epitome in the sentence, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.' If the Battle of Britain had been lost it is very likely the New Order to which the Axis powers had pledged themselves would have become global with unthinkable consequences for the world afterwards. The importance of the Battle of Britain cannot be exaggerated though inevitably in the succeeding years the accretion of myth has brought about many distortions. This multi-faceted symposium emerged from the Centre of Second World War Studies at Edinburgh University with the aim, in the words of the editors, 'to reassess established themes while opening up new ones.' After a masterly introduction by Brian Bond, the book is divided into six parts: Before the Battle; The Battle; The View from Afar; Experience and Memory; The Making of a British Legend and The Significance. The contributors are: Klaus A. Maier; Malcolm Smith; Horst Boog; Sebastian Cox; Sergei Kudryshov; Richard P. Hallion; Theodore F. Cook; Hans-Ekkehard Bob; Wallace Cunningham; Nigel Rose; Owen Dudley Edwards; Angus Calder; Tony Aldgate; Adrian Gregory; Jeremy Lake and John Schofield; Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang and Richard Overy. No survey could be more wide-ranging or fascinating. First published in 2000 to mark the 60th anniversary, it is now being reissued in 2010 to mark the 70th anniversary. 'But it is terrific. It's not only an acknowledgement of the heroism of the fighter pilots (and all the ancillary crew), but a serious contribution to the historical record. Seventeen contributors write about the Battle from pretty much every conceivable angle; and Addison and Crang have chosen them well. . . This is not an automatically worshipful book; it poses questions about the morality of war, the existence of heroism, the reliability of memory. But it treats the subject honestly and with justice. And it tells us why we won: because, it would appear, it helps to come from a society that is sceptical of authority rather than in blind, unthinking terror of it.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian ''This book is a first-class piece of work, stimulating, informative and concise.' Brian Holden Reid, Times Higher Education Supplement. 'This is a nugget of a book . . . it assembles, most readably, a range of authoritative and international views on the Battle, its history, and its significance.' Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Graydon, Royal United Services Institute 'This is a much told story, but the varied viewpoints of the 20 contributors to Burning Blue - ranging from a fascinating essay by Owen Dudley Edwards on the air war as reflected in children's literaturer to the memories of pilots who fought in it on both sides - give an impressive breadth and depth. And even though it strips away hindsight and refuses to burnish legends, what is left is still one of the most remarkable stories in the whole of British history. The British empire didn't last a thousand years, but the man was right: this truly was its finest hour.' David Robinson, The Scotsman

From the respected instructor and author Paul Addison, PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAM DESIGN: PROBLEM SOLVING WITH JAVASCRIPT, International Edition presents the fundamental concepts of good program design, illustrated and reinforced by hands-on examples using JavaScript. Why JavaScript? It simply illustrates the programming concepts explained in the book, requires no special editor or compiler, and runs in any browser. Little or no experience is needed because the emphasis is on learning by doing. There are examples of coding exercises throughout every chapter, varying in length and representing simple to complex problems. This book encourages you to think in terms of the logical steps needed to solve a problem, and you can take these skills with you to any programming language in the future. To help reinforce concepts, each chapter has a chapter summary, review questions, hand-on activities, and a case study hat you build on in each chapter.

In his day Winston Churchill was one of the most famous human beings who ever lived. In 1945 most people in the world would have seen his name in the headlines, heard the latest news of him on the radio or seen his face beaming or glowering in the newsreels. His funeral in 1965 is said to have been watched on television by 350 million people around the globe. Those days are long gone, and the massed ranks of his contemporaries have been scythed away leaving only a few who remember him as a living presence. But of all the politicians of the 20th century, he is the only one to have inspired an apparently never-ending cascade of books, articles and documentaries. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that his place in our past is still in dispute. He is as controversial today as he was for much of his lifetime, and most of those who study him fall into one of two camps: pro or ante. Neutrality and indifference are rare. In this book Paul Addison, who has been studying Churchill for 40 years, weighs the arguments, looking at both the pro and anti Churchill case, but concluding not only that he was a great man but that his life was one of the most astonishing and fortunate accidents in world history.

The war years witnessed a radical shift in political power, expressed in Labour's decisive electoral victory victory in 1945. In his classicstudy - now revised - Paul Addison traces this sea-change back to the Thirties and powerfully recaptures the spirit of post-war reconstruction. 'It tells with wit, scholarship and imagination how the British peopleentered the Promised Land - or seemed to' OBSERVER 'This is a landmark in the writing of contemporary history and deserves wide acclaim' TLS

During the Blitz, the morale of the British people was clandestinely monitored by Home Intelligence, a unit of the Ministry of Information that kept watch on the behaviour and opinions of the public and eavesdropped on their conversations. Drawing on a wide range of intelligence sources from every region of the United Kingdom, a small team of officials based at the Senate House of the University of London compiled secret reports on the state of popular morale as the Luftwaffe attacked Britain's major towns and cities between September 1940 and May 1941. Edited and introduced by two leading historians of the period, who tell the inside story of Home Intelligence and why it proved so controversial in Whitehall, the complete and unabridged sequence of reports provide us with a unique and extraordinary window into the mindset of the British during a momentous period in their history. Not only do they include in-depth reports on the effects of the bombing, including special reports on Coventry, Clydebank, Hull, Barrow-in-Furness, Plymouth, Merseyside and Portsmouth, but also insights into almost every aspect of everyday life in Britain as well as the response of the public to the shifting military fortunes of the war. Reading like the collective diary of a nation, the reports strip away the nostalgia that has grown up around the period, reminding us instead of the sufferings and sacrifices, the many frustrations and difficulties of daily life, the administrative bungling, the grumbling and petty jealousies, and the determination of the overwhelming majority to put up with it all for the sake of beating Hitler.

On the night of 13 and 14 February 1945 the RAF bombed the city of Dresden, causing devastating fires which obliterated the historic city centre and killed many thousands of people. Sixty years later these raids remain one of the most notorious, and also one of the most controversial, episodes in the history of the Second World War. Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden 1945 assembles a cast of distinguished scholars, including Sebastian Cox, David Bloxham, Nicola Lambourne, Soenke Neitzel, Richard Overy and Hew Strachan, to review the origins, conduct, and consequences of the raids. Each contributor writes from his or her own perspective, offering the reader a panoramic reassessment of the evidence and the issues, including the question of whether or not the bombing of the city constitutes a war crime. Firestorm cogently demonstrates the reasons why Dresden has come to symbolise the military and ethical questions involved in the waging of total war.

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill won two resounding victories. The first was a victory over Nazi Germany, the second a victory over the legion of sceptics who had derided his judgement, denied his claims to greatness, and excluded him from high office on the grounds that he was sure to be a danger to King and Country. Churchill was the only British politician of the twentieth century to become an enduring national hero. The curious thing is that it happened at the age of 65, at a time when he was considered to be a spent force, with a track-record of disastrous decisions. All but the most hostile of his adversaries conceded that he possessed great abilities, remarkable eloquence, and a streak of genius. But it was almost universally agreed that he was a shameless egotist, an opportunist without principles or convictions, an unreliable colleague, an erratic policy-maker who lacked judgement, and a reckless amateur strategist with a dangerous passion for war and bloodshed. At one time or another in his career, he had offended every party and faction in the land, yet despite this he became the embodiment of national unity, an uncrowned king who threatened to eclipse the monarchy. In this incisive new biography, Paul Addison tells the story of Churchill's life in parallel with the history of his reputation. He seeks to explain why Churchill was transformed into a national hero, and why his heroic status has endured ever since in spite of the attempts of iconoclasts to debunk him. He argues that we are now in a position to reach beyond the mythology - both positive and negative - to see the real Winston Churchill, a warrior-statesman whose qualities were remarkably consistent through all the vicissitudes of his career.