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1.Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944--45 by: Max Hastings October 01, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: £8.99 Off The Bookshelf's Price: £4.49 You Save: £4.50 (50%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: £3.17
I was a little disappointed with this book. I bought it thinking it would be as good a read as 'Armageddon' by the same author. But here I was wrong. It seems that the author has tried to fill up a long book rather quickly without paying too much attention to the overall readability. He does cover the Japanese point of view too, which is interesting but I think he has included too many personal interviews with survivors. It must be fascinating for someone who lived through it all, who can piece it all together today - but I was left a little confused and just about managed to finish reading the book. Not easy reading.

2.Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 by: Ian Kershaw February 28, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: £10.99 Off The Bookshelf's Price: £6.99 You Save: £4.00 (36%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: £2.96
EVENTS, DEAR BOY, EVENTS By IAIN FRASER GRIGOR THE PRINCIPLES of warfare are really very simple. As codified by the military sages of antiquity and modernity, they can be reduced to two simple rules. The first is to win without having to fight at all. And the second is: if you have to fight, attack a small, defenceless and entirely unconscious enemy with devastating superiority of force and absolute surprise. The great Prussian von Moltke knew this. But he was to add one great aphorism to the principles of war, to the effect that no plan survives contact with the enemy. So it was in the wars of his nineteenth century, after all, and so it would prove to be in the first Great War of Europe's bloody twentieth ... Read More:

3.Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Allen Lane History) by: Mark Mazower June 05, 2008
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This is an excellent book, with a qualifying 'but'. If you want to understand the dynamic of 'Hitlers Empire', how it developed and collapsed, and the details of its particular favour of genocidal gangsterism, then this will satisfy all the curiosity you have, and then some. My only complain about the main content is that it is a bit short on personalities (though this may be an unavoidable problem - the focus of the book is, after all, on process and governance). You get little real feel for the _people_ who did all this. Mazower does not mention anyone having nightmares, or developing a drink problem (lots of people are mentioned as having drinking problems, but only for the usual, soap-opera sort of reasons, not because of a day job in the mass murder ... Read More:

4.The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by: Orlando Figes October 04, 2007
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In this book, Figes has diluted and refined his mastery of the art of weaving historical sources together. These family narratives which, without this book, would certainly have been lost, provide a compelling insight into the reality of Soviet Russia - the 'historical' backdrop of dates and movements takes a back seat to the gritty honesty of real people's testimony of what living through this era was actually like. A fantastic read.

5.The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Allen Lane History) by: Richard J Evans October 02, 2008
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This magnificent book completes Evans' trilogy on the Third Reich. It covers all aspects of the war including the home front: morale, the role of women, the effect of the bombing, food, wages and conditions. He also examines the roles of the air force, navy and army, and gives us shrewd portraits of the leading personalities in the Nazi state. Nazi ideology blamed the Jews for all ills, including the Second World War itself, and saw communism and socialism as essentially Jewish. Hitler created a genocidal mentality and justified a genocidal policy. The Nazis committed countless atrocities. They killed thousands of handicapped children. They killed as many Gypsies as they could. They deported Jews from all the countries they occupied to death camps like Auschwitz. ... Read More:

6.Comrades: Communism: A World History by: Robert Service May 02, 2008
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The author has written a reasonable account of communism. He shows how communism derived from a number of ideas that lie far back in time - many existing well before the French Revolution. He discusses various movements that led to liberalism and socialism - all stemming from the so called Enlightment. The socialist branches themselves subdivided into several different types of socialism of which communism was one sub-branch and this in itself was divided further since Marxism was initially only one type of communism. At this stage he gives a brief outline of the some of the main ideas behind Marxism (i.e. 'inverted' Hegelianism, the surplus value theory of economics, historical necessity and so on). This introduction gets the ball rolling. Although he later mentions ... Read More:

7.Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe by: Adam Zamoyski February 04, 2008
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Warsaw 1920 is an easily available book on an important topic. As an introductory narrative it's OK. There's little exploration of major themes, the presumptions behind what analysis there is are unexplored. Quite why (other than a 'miracle') the Poles reversed their early defeats remains unexplained. The wider context of the Russian Civil War isn't really integrated. The pro-Polish bias grates after a while. Much richer, if you can still get it, is Norman Davies' 'White Eagle, Red Star'. Plenty wrong with that as well, but it provides a deeper exploration that makes it useful even if you don't share Davies' viewpoint.

8.World War One: A Short History by: Norman Stone March 27, 2008
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Although he has a reputation for being provocative I find Prof. Stone insightful with a gift for looking at a subject from a different perspective. This book while far from comprehensive gives a brief overview of the war that ended the Edwardian Golden Age. It confirms my suspicions that WWI was an exercise in Prussian adventurism. A pre-emptive war aimed primarily at the Russians, by whom they felt they would be overshadowed by 1920 and in the West to knock out the French as quickly as possible. A situation that would be repeated 25 years later. For Britain, fighting initially followed the tradition the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War, etc, where it would subsidise its Continental Allies to fight for it using its trade surplus (1916 is the only year Britain sold more goods abroad than it earned). Russia for ... Read More:

9.Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War 1944-45 by: James Holland March 03, 2008
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James Holland's generosity of spirit and indefatiguable labour has created one of the best general histories I've read recently--and there's a lot of stiff competition about. As well as using writen sources, Holland personally interviewed survivors from all sides of the conflict; Germans, Poles, Canadians, Britons, Americans, Italian partisans and fascists. These accounts give a vivid picture of the heroism and brutality of war, and instil a sense of sympathy for (almost) all of the participants. Their stories are skillfully blended into the larger narrative, which explains what happened, and why the major players (Alexander, Mark Clark, Kesselring, Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, etc) made crucial decisions. Holland is immenently fair-minded; the controversy surrounding Clark's dash for Rome (in defiance of Alexander's ... Read More:

10.Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem) by: David Kynaston October 06, 2008
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No-one could fault the time and effort that have gone into producing this extensive work but the sheer volume of facts, figures and comments might well prove mind-numbing to the average reader and certainly led to me - who can just remember the period in question - losing interest and scanning through pages looking for the essence amongst innumerable details. A great resource for a student of the times but not for those seeking a general account of these important years.

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