In September 1938, Europe teetered on the brink of war. The German dictator, Adolph Hitler, planned the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and its ultimate absorption into the Third Reich. Winston Churchill, who was then a member of parliament, understood Hitler's motives far better than those in the Chamberlain Government. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was desperate to avoid war. At the time of what became known as the Munich Crisis, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had no diplomatic experience, was the ambassador to the Court of St. James. Without authority from the State Department, Kennedy summoned Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, then the most famous aviator in the world, from France and had him write a report overnight on the German air force. Shortly before Chamberlain left for his fateful meeting with Hitler at Munich, Kennedy secretly gave him "The Lindbergh Report." It was, perhaps, the most shocking document ever handed to a British prime minister.

Wartime Missions of Harry L. Hopkins describes two missions to see Churchill and two missions to see Stalin. There are two unique features of this book. It highlights the close, personal relationship between Hopkins and Churchill, which all too often has been overlooked and it examines the declining relationship that Hopkins had with Stalin which began with such high hopes.

On 10 December 1941, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese bombers in the South China Sea. Amongst the several hundred men who went down with her was her Captain, John Leach, who had fought against frightful odds and to the very end made the best of an impossible situation with courage and calmness. He truly embodied 'the highest traditions of the Royal Navy'. Author Matthew B. Wills analyses the influences that shaped John Leach and led him ultimately to his heroic end: his time at Royal Naval College Osborne and Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth and his baptism of fire when he survived a direct shell hit to the bridge where he was standing. He describes Leach's role in command during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, during which the Prince of Wales inflicted damage on the Bismarck that contributed to her later destruction and then the ill-fated mission to Singapore as part of Force Z, an attempt to intercept Japanese landings in Malaya.