A sweeping history of the Cold War’s many “hot” wars born in the last gasps of empire The Cold War reigns in popular imagination as a period of tension between the two post-World War II superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, without direct conflict. Drawing from new archival research, prize-winning historian Michael Burleigh gives new meaning to the seminal decades of 1945 to 1965 by examining the many, largely forgotten, “hot” wars fought around the world. As once-great Western colonial empires collapsed, counter-insurgencies campaigns raged in the Philippines, the Congo, Iran, and other faraway places. Dozens of new nations struggled into existence, the legacies of which are still felt today. Placing these vicious struggles alongside the period-defining United States and Soviet standoffs in Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, Burleigh swerves from Algeria to Kenya, to Vietnam and Kashmir, interspersing top-level diplomatic negotiations with portraits of the charismatic local leaders. The result is a dazzling work of history, a searing analysis of the legacy of imperialism and a reminder of just how the United States became the world’s great enforcer.

Product Description: The collapse of Western colonial empires after the Second World War led to any number of vicious struggles for power whose bloody consequences haunt us still. Acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh's brilliant analytic skills and clear eye for common themes underpins this powerful account of those struggles...read more

Product Description: "Magnificent. . . . Seldom has a study of the past combined such erudition with such exuberance." —The Guardian "No-one with an interest in the Second World War should be without this book; and indeed nor should anyone who cares about how our world has come about...read more

In this sweepingly ambitious overview of World War II, Michael Burleigh combines meticulous scholarship with a remarkable depth of knowledge and an astonishing scope. By exploring the moral sentiments of entire societies and their leaders and how such attitudes changed under the impact of total war, Burleigh presents listeners with a fresh and powerful perspective on a conflict that continues to shape world politics. Whereas previous histories of the war have tended to focus on grand strategy or major battles, Burleigh brings his painstaking scholarship and profound sensibility to bear on the factors that shaped choices that were life-and-death decisions. These choices were made in real time, without the benefit of a philosopher's reflection, giving a moral content to the war that shaped it as decisively as any battle. Although the Nazis and the Japanese had radically different moral universes from those of their Allied opponents, the Western Allies found themselves aligned with a no less cruel dictatorship after rejecting the option of appeasing aggression. The war was the sum of myriad choices made by governments, communities, and individuals, leading some to enthusiastically embrace evil and others to consciously reject it, with a range of more ambiguously human responses in between. Spanning both major theaters, Moral Combat sheds a revealing light on how entire nations changed under the shock of total war. Emphasizing the role of the past in making sense of the present, Burleigh's book offers essential insights into the choices we face today--in some circles it is always 1938 and every aggressor is a new Hitler. If we do go to war, we need to know what it will mean for the individuals who command and fight it. Original, perceptive, and astonishing in scholarship and scope, this is an unforgettable and hugely important work of Second World War history.

Product Description: Book by Burleigh, Michael

Product Description: Beginning with the chaotic post-World War I landscape, in which religious belief was one way of reordering a world knocked off its axis, Sacred Causes is a penetrating critique of how religion has often been camouflaged by politics...read more

The award-winning author of The Third Reich provides a provocative analysis of the diverse ways in which politics and religion have influenced each other over the course of the past two centuries, looking at the struggles between church and state and the resulting rise of totalitarian movements in the twentieth century. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

This work sets out the inextricable link of politics and religion over the past two centuries, from the French Revolution to the Great War.

The author chronicles the rise of the Freikorps, a paramilitary organization with roots in the First World War that was later co-opted by Hitler's Nazi Party and used as tool for political repression and intimidation. Original.

“A learned and erudite book. Burleigh seamlessly synthesizes vast amounts of historical material and provides often riveting accounts of terrorist atrocities and the literary and political environments where they took place. . . . Thoughtful and nuanced. . . . An exceptional synthesis.” — The New York Times Book Review “Burleigh has said that a new book about terrorism is published every nine hours. Judging by his own work on the subject, he has read all the others.” — The Boston Globe From one of our most respected historians, Michael Burleigh (The Third Reich: A New History), comes a fascinating and provocative study of terrorism, from revolutionary Europe to today’s Islamic jihadists.

Combining intellectual history, biography and the analysis of particular institutions, this work shows the relations between the Nazi regime and contemporary scholarly experts on eastern Europe, which eventually put an entire academic discipline on a path which led to biological racism and manipulation under the Nazis.

Argues that the Germans' acceptance of Hitler's totalitarianism and Nazi philosophies stemmed from their desire for economic prosperity and a national identity, which slowly developed into a collective conscience and religious fervor. (view table of contents)

Product Description: From the HISTORY TODAY series, 12 historians from Germany, Britain, America and Israel consider the impact of the Nazi regime on German society.

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Product Description: Michael Burleigh, author of The Racial State: 1933-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) has assembled twelve historians from Germany, Britain, America and Israel to present the latest research on the urgent debate about the Nazi past from today's perspective...read more

Product Description: Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazis systematically murdered as many as 200,000 mentally ill or physically disabled people whom they stigmatised as 'life unworthy of life'. This complex and covert series of operations was known as the 'euthanasia' programme...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: A study of how relations between the Nazi regime and contemporary scholarly experts on eastern Europe eventually set an entire academic discipline on a path to biological racism through Nazi manipulation.