"After D-Day, 6 June 1944, Hitler found his worst nightmare coming true. He was fighting on two fronts, with the Russians advancing from one side and the western powers from the other. This book shows how the Allies built on their successes after the titanic struggle in the east, culminating in the brutal battle of Stalingrad, and emerged victorious from the Second World War."
"World War II was the greatest conflict in human history, involving over 100 million people serving in the forces of the Axis and the Allies and resulting in 50 to 70 million deaths. This book covers war in Europe, war in the Pacific and war across a number of other fronts between 1939 and 1945. Features the leading protagonists in the conflict, their ideological positions and the strategies they employed."
"Ships have been overwhelmed by huge waves, consumed by fires, broken apart, sunk by storms and driven onto uncharted rocks. They have collided with icebergs or other ships, been sunk by enemy torpedoes or gunfire, or run aground on unlit coastlines at night. Boilers have exploded. Magazines have ignited. Cargoes have shifted with catastrophic consequences and submarines have submerged never to come up again.
Shipwrecks selects the sinkings with the greatest loss of life, the most famous vessels, the richest treasure troves, the most archaeologically significant wreck sites and the most daring rescues. It tells the tales of the fate of the victims, the disastrous mistakes made by ships' captains and navigators, the impossible conditions faced at sea, the courage of those who survived and the audacious attempts to raise what now lies at the bottom of the sea."
"How did a former Austrian corporal in the Bavarian army with no obvious gift for leadership or strategy become the leader of one of the most civilized countries in Europe?
This is a penetrating analysis of the personality of Adolf Hitler, perhaps the most enigmatic figure of the 20th century. Drawing on psychological studies of the time, The Evil Madness of Hitler presents fascinating insights into one of history's most murderous dictators. This book explains the tyrant that ran the Third Reich and the demons that haunted him, with remarkable revelations about his sex life."
"This book tells the story of Operation Overlord, the largest and most meticulously planned seaborne invasion in the history of warfare.
As dawn broke on 6 June 1944, thousands of Allied soldiers - American, British, Canadian, Free French and Polish - hit the Normandy beaches and stormed the German defenses of the Atlantic Wall. By Midnight, over 150,000 troops had been safely landed, and the ling push towards Berlin and the final defeat of the Third Reich had begun."
"'I have committed many acts of cruelty and had an incalculable number of men killed, never knowing whether what I did was right. But I am indifferent to what people think of me.'
- Genghis Khan
A spine-chilling chronicle of dictators and their crimes against humanity, Tyrants introduces the most bloodthirsty madmen - and women - ever to wield power over their unfortunate fellow human beings.
From Herod the Great, persecutor of the infant Jesus, to Adolf Hitler, mass murderer and instigator of the most devastating war the world has ever known, this book examines history's most infamous despots and tells in vivid detail the story of the lives they led, their ruthless climb to the top and the destruction and sorrow they left in their wake.
Unflinching in its coverage, Tyrants is a gripping and compelling portrait of the darker side of politics and power, revealing the strange and grisly stories behind the world's most infamous autocrats."
"Vietnam was the longest war in American history. US ground troops and their Australian, New Zealand and Korean allies were committed there for eight long years. In all, the American commitment in Southeast Asia lasted 15 years. During that time over 46,000 US servicemen died in battle. The Australian and New Zealand troops who fought there lost 496 dead and 2,398 wounded. But these figures pale beside Vietnamese losses, which totalled over a million.
Vietnam was the first war America lost. It left the country bitterly divided. Many of the 2.7 million Americans who served there suffered psychologically for decades to come and the USA discovered that, for all its might and technological superiority, it could not defeat the ill-equipped peasant army of a small and fiercely determined enemy.
In this concise account, historian Nigel Cawthorne traces the conflict from its inception to its traumatic end. He looks at the political events that led to the war and examines its impact upon both the Americans and the Vietnamese, whose battle for the independence of their country was to leave lingering scars upon the American psyche. Vietnam: A War Lost and Won is an even-handed assessment of a conflict whose wounds would take a generation to heal."
"Pirates have an almost mythical status in the public imagination - we think of rogue heroes riding the high seas and 'X marks the spot'. But this image is flawed at best.
Using contemporary sources, Nigel Cawthorne turns the spotlight on the reality of pirate life, revealing the truth behind the legends. It gives us an insight into infamous the men and women who plundered ship and shore, including Captain Kidd, Blackbeard and Mary Read. We learn of the hazy distinction between pirates and state-approved privateers who were used to maintain empire, as well as the Port Royal pirate base in Jamaica - known as the 'wickedest city in the world'.
Including details of various pirate exploits, as well as their weapons, ships and unhappy victims, this fascinating read will divide fact from slippery fiction."
"Great battles mark history's turning points, occurring where cultures and ideologies clash. While some battles have been won by the superior force, others have been won by a sheer dogged refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. Superior weaponry has sometimes brought victory, as at Plassey, while the extraordinary generalship of a Napoleon, a Wellington, or a Marlborough has won the day on other occasions.
From the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, when the vastly-outnumbered Athenian army turned back an invasion of the mighty Persian empire, up to the Vietnamese defeat of the French army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the battles in this book demonstrate that fate is not always on the side of the big battalions."
"48 assassinations - from Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Osama Bin Laden - that changed the world. We live in an age of asymmetric warfare. Huge armies no longer face each other on the battlefield. Instead heads of major powers and lone assassins (or martyrs) target each other to pursue their agendas. President Donald Trump felt it necessary to use drones to blow away the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Qasem Soleimani-a mastermind of terrorism in the Middle East who threatened the lives of US troops-and President Barack Obama felt fully justified in sending in US Navy SEALs to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. This is the nature of modern warfare. And it is only going to get worse. When nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, in 1914, he triggered the First World War. Few assassinations have had such devastating consequences, but political assassinations have always changed the world - often in ways that the assassins and their cohorts could not have predicted. The murder of John F. Kennedy left Lyndon B. Johnson free to escalate the war in Vietnam. However, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. while not derailing the demands for African American civil rights in the US, did lead many to abandoning his commitment to nonviolence and adopting more radical means. In a world globalized by social media, more lone-wolf assassins seek their fifteen minutes of fame by taking out a famous figure, while leaders of world powers have everything to gain by decapitating terrorist organizations, employing the latest surveillance technology to obliterate their leaders. There are forty-eight assassinations that changed the world in this book. Rest assured that in the coming years we will see many more."
"When bigotry and power-mania take control, disaster always follows for subjugated persons - even when the power is wielded by the Church.
Witchcraft was viewed as devil-worship. Between 1450 and 1750, one hundred thousand people were accused, subject to the most bestial tortures and usually executed. Witches examines the wildfire-spread of witch hunting across Europe and America, revealing the disturbing and brutal realities of these witch hunts and their roots in misogyny and religious persecution.
It includes:
• Letters and trial testimonies from those charged with witchcraft, as well as some from self-proclaimed witches
• Biographic detail of key witch hunters, such as Matthew Hopkins (the so-called Witchfinder General) who was responsible for hundreds of executions
• Accounts of famous witch trials, from Chelmsford to Salam
Nigel Cawthorne doesn't shy away from the violent details of this persecution, exploring the events as they transpired, the contexts that triggered them and tracing it back to its source.
Please note: This audiobook contains descriptions of a violent and sexual nature and is not intended for younger listeners. Discretion is advised."
"Kings & Queens of England is an entertaining account of the larger-than-life characters that have ruled England through the ages. Divided into easy-reference chapters based on the ruling dynasties of England, it follows the fascinating history of monarchs from the first Saxon kings to the Windsors of the present day.
Author Nigel Cawthorne paints vivid portraits of a mixed bunch of rulers ranging from the drunken and debauched merry monarch Charles II to the idealized domesticity and colonial ambition of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert."
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