[MP3-CD audiobook format in Vinyl case.] [Read by Simon Vance] From the acclaimed military historian, a new history of the outbreak of World War I -- from the breakdown of diplomacy to the dramatic battles that occurred before the war bogged down in the trenches. World War I immediately evokes images of the trenches -- grinding, halting battles that sacrificed millions of lives for no territory or visible gain. Yet the first months of the war, from the German invasion of Belgium to the Marne to Ypres, were utterly different -- full of advances and retreats, tactical maneuvering, and significant gains and losses. In Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings re-creates this dramatic year, from the diplomatic crisis to the fighting in Belgium and France on the western front and Serbia and Galicia to the east. He gives vivid accounts of the battles and frank assessments of generals and political leaders, and shows why it was inevitable that this first war among modern industrial nations could not produce a decisive victory, resulting in a war of attrition. Throughout we encounter high officials and average soldiers, as well as civilians on the home front, giving us a vivid portrait of how a continent became embroiled in a war that would change everything.

Product Description: Collected here for the first time are key works by this century’s leading military historians, all recipients of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The Pritzker Literature Award honors writers whose work adds to the public’s understanding of military history and the role played by the military in civil society...read more

Product Description: [Library Edition Audiobook CD in sturdy Vinyl case.] [Read by Simon Vance] From the acclaimed military historian, a new history of the outbreak of World War I -- from the breakdown of diplomacy to the dramatic battles that occurred before the war bogged down in the trenches...read more

An account of the massive strategic bombing offensive waged by Britain from 1939 to 1945

From one of our finest military historians comes a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives--an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people--of soldiers, sailors, and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews--Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments--Hitler's refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late, Stalin's ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army, Churchill's leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, Roosevelt's steady hand before and after the United States entered the war--and puts them in real human context. Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war's penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin's invading Red Army, and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru's words, ''the final epitaph of British rule'' in India. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.

Product Description: [This is the Audiobook CD Library Edition in vinyl case.] From one of our finest military historians comes a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives--an average of twenty-seven thousand a day...read more

Product Description: The famous D-day landing of 6th June 1944 marked the beginning of Operation Overlord, the battle for the liberation of Europe. Max Hastings has overturned many traditional legends to write this study. Drawing together the eyewitness accounts of survivors from both sides and sources and documents, this text provides a controversial perspective on the devastating battle for Normandy...read more

A definitive chronicle of the final year in the Pacific war of World War II offers insightful portraits of key figures in the efforts to defeat Japan--MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek--and discusses such topics as the road to Allied victory, the war's bloody campaigns, Japan's war against China, and the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 100,000 first printing.

Product Description: This book is an examination of the intellectual milestones and contributions of the IISS to fifty years of strategic studies.

Features illustrated histories of the British forces over the past century of modern warfare. Filled with personal testimonies, memorabilia, and tributes to the key figures of each services this work is endorsed by the Imperial War Museum, and fronted by noted historian Sir Max Hastings.

Product Description: It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. In this extensive history, preeminent military historian Max Hastings takes us back to the bloody, bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950...read more

Offers advice and information on various imaginable country topics, from how to understand the behaviour of rooks to how to clean a shotgun, from when and how to prune roses or apple trees to how to deal with moles, from how to make a rock garden to cookery advice on wildfowl and salmon, hare and rabbit, and more.

Product Description: It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. In this extensive history, preeminent military historian Max Hastings takes us back to the bloody, bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950...read more

Product Description: It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. In this extensive history, preeminent military historian Max Hastings takes us back to the bloody, bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950...read more