Histories of the Unexpected. World War II Willis Sam , Daybell James Atlantic Books

Histories of the Unexpected not only presents a new way of thinking about the past, but also reveals the world around us as never before • Traditionally, the Romans have been understood in a straightforward way but the period really comes alive if you take an unexpected approach to its history. Yes, emperors, the development of civilisation and armies all have a fascinating history… but so too do tattoos, collecting, fattening, recycling, walking, poison, fish, inkwells and wicked stepmothers! • Each of these subjects is equally fascinating in its own right, and each sheds new light on the traditional subjects and themes that we think we know so well

«Острие: американский стрелок-танкист, его враг и столкновение жизней во Второй мировой войне» — книга о Кларенсе Смойере, написанная автором военной истории Адамом Макосом • Поначалу наводчик Кларенс Смойер и его товарищи по легендарной 3-й бронетанковой дивизии "Острие копья" считали свои танки непобедимыми. Но потом они встретились с немецкой "Пантерой", пушка которой была настолько убийственной, что могла прострелить один "Шерман" и попасть в другой. Вскоре выяснилась закономерность: головной танк всегда подбивают • Пережив потерю друзей при прорыве Западной стены в Арденнской битве, Кларенс и его команда получили оружие, способное отомстить за их павших братьев, - "Першинг", новейший "супертанк", один из двадцати на европейском театре военных действий

Selected from the work of soldiers killed in action - starting with Rupert Brooke in 1915 and ending with the tragic loss of Wilfred Owen seven days before the Armistice - the poems capture a broad range of emotions and states of mind, ranging from anthems about the brutality of war to wistful evocations of home and loved ones left behind • Few people alive today had direct experience of the First World War, and yet it seems embedded in the collective consciousness of the combatant nations as a warning to future generations of the futility of military conflict. Our awareness of the terror, loneliness and desperate hope endured by the men who fought this war we owe to the quality of the art that came out of it, not least the poetry. Despite the passage of time, its ability to move and inspire us remains undimmed, as this superb new compilation richly demonstrates

From award-winning historian Saul David, an action-packed and powerful new narrative of the Battle of Okinawa - the last great clash of the Second World War, and one that had profound consequences for the modern world • For eighty-three blood-soaked days, the fighting on the island of Okinawa plumbed depths of savagery as bad as anything seen on the Eastern Front. When it was over, almost a quarter of a million people had lost their lives, making it by far the bloodiest US battle of the Pacific. In Okinawa, the death toll included thousands of civilians lost to mass suicide, convinced by Japanese propaganda that they would otherwise be raped and murdered by the enemy. On the US side, David argues that the horror of the battle ultimately determined President Truman's choice to use atomic bombs in August 1945

By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders • In The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling's quest for his son's grave; E.M. Forster's conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies

From the great cities of Europe to the jungles of Burma, and from the deserts of North Africa to the remote islands of the South Pacific and the freezing waters of the Arctic, the Second World War touched every continent and ocean on the planet. And from the Blitzkrieg to the atom bomb, the fighting fuelled new technological development on land, at sea and in the air at a ferocious pace. Our future was forged by war • Combining compelling personal stories with a clear and accessible appreciation of the strategic and operational battle for supremacy between the Allies and the Axis powers, bestselling historian James Holland weaves an irresistible narrative, with over 250 illustrations by acclaimed artist Keith Burns, commissioned specially for this project

The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles in history • This is the story of that war • Relying on first-hand accounts as well as papers recently released by the Admiralty, The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of WW2 literature • It combines history, science, derring do and dogged determination and will appeal as much to fans of WW2 history as to those fascinated by the science behind the beams that changed our lives • The British believed that, through ingenuity and scientific prowess, they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too • They believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational aids. Flying above the clouds they, like the seafarers of old, had the stars to guide them, and that is all that is required

In the annals of military history, the Western Front stands as an enduring symbol of the folly and futility of war • However, as bestselling military historian Nick Lloyd reveals in this highly-praised history - the first of an epic trilogy -- the story is not one of pointlessness and stupidity, but rather a heroic triumph against the odds. With a cast of hundreds and a huge canvas of places and events, Lloyd tells the whole tale, revealing what happened in France and Belgium between August 1914 and November 1918 from the perspective of all the main combatants - including French, British, Belgian, US and, most importantly, German forces • Lloyd examines the most decisive campaigns of the Great War and explains the unprecedented innovation, adaptation and tactical development that have been too long obscured by legends of mud, blood and futility, drawing upon the latest scholarship on the war, wrongly overlooked first-person accounts, and archival material from every angle

WORLD WAR II: PANZER CLAWS [также известная как Frontline Attack: War over Europe] раздвигает границы стратегических игр в реальном времени!

April, 1943: a sardine fisherman spots the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and sets off a train of events that would change the course of the Second World War • Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and certainly the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, from any spy before or since: he was dead. His mission: to convince the Germans that instead of attacking Sicily, the Allied armies planned to invade Greece • The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the great hoax involved an extraordinary cast of characters including a famous forensic pathologist, a gold-prospector, an inventor, a beautiful secret service secretary, a submarine captain, three novelists, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp

A ground-breaking new study brings us a very different picture of the Second World War, asking fundamental questions about ethical commitments • Accounts of the Second World War usually involve tales of bravery in battle, or stoicism on the home front, as the British public stood together against Fascism. However, the war looks very different when seen through the eyes of the 60,000 conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories, unlike those of the First World War, have been almost entirely forgotten • Tobias Kelly invites us to spend the war five of these individuals: Roy Ridgway, a factory clerk from Liverpool; Tom Burns, a teacher from east London; Stella St John, who trained as a vet and ended up in jail; Ronald Duncan, who set up a collective farm; and Fred Urquhart, a working-class Scottish socialist and writer

The second book by the bestselling author of Extraordinary Insects • Trees clean air and water; hoverflies and bees pollinate our crops; the kingfisher inspired the construction of high-speed trains. In Tapestries of Life, bestselling author Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains how closely we are all connected with the natural world, highlighting our indelible link with nature’s finely knit system and our everyday lives • In the heart of natural world is a life-support system like no other, a collective term that describes all the goods and services we receive – food, fresh water, medicine, pollination, pollution control, carbon sequestration, erosion prevention, recreation, spiritual health and so much more. In this utterly captivating book, Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson sets out to explore these wonderful, supportive elements – taking the reader on a journey through the surprising characteristics of the natural world