In March 1945, the German desperate offensive on the Danube began. While the Sixth SS Armored Army came out of positions to establish bridgeheads across the river, the STAVKA, Russia’s supreme command, was already making plans for the attack on Vienna. For ten days the German army plodded eastward until it was left exhausted. The big breakthrough did not materialize. On March 16, the Vienna operation began. The attacker became the defender, and between Budapest and Vienna the German army fo...

It has been seventy yeas since the battle of Stalingrad ended. The city at the river Wolga drew German troops to it like a magnat. Hitler had officially declared the city as ‘fallen’, but then the Red Army encircled the German 6th Army. What followed was a major human tragedy. Honderds of thousands were trapped in the city. Food and ammunition were scarce and an attempt to break through from the South failed. The German troops were left with an air bridge. The daily air transport flew on ...

After the collapse of the front in France, a Stalingrad-like defeat was looming over the British expeditionary army in France. The soldiers were trapped like rats. German tanks rolled towards the town of Dunkirk after their successful ‘Blitzkrieg’, where tens of thousands of soldiers were huddled together. Then, out of nowhere, came Hitler’s halting order and the tank divisions stood still. From England, meanwhile, hundreds of ships were on their way to help perform a miracle. Before th...

*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History*

'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent

The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize

For more than four weeks in the au...

There are many stories we can tell about the past, and we are not, perhaps, as free as we might imagine in our choice of which stories to tell, or where those stories end. John Arnold's Very Short Introduction is a stimulating essay about how we study and understand history. The book begins by inviting us to think about various questions provoked by our investigation of history, and explores the ways these questions have been answered in the past.

Concepts such as causation, interpretation, a...

Herodotus is not only known as the `father of history', as Cicero called him, but also the father of ethnography; as well as charting the historical background to the Persian Wars, his curiosity also prompts frequent digression on the cultures of the peoples he introduces. While much of the information he gives has proved to be astonishingly accurate, he also entertains us with delightful tales of one-eyed men and gold-digging ants. This readable new translation is supplemented with expansive...

The calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. The author examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s.

The first truly global history of work, an upbeat assessment from the age of the hunter-gatherer to the present day