The First World War killed around eight million men and bled Europe dry. Was the sacrifice worth it? Was it all really an inevitable cataclysm and were the Germans a genuine threat? Was the war, as is often asserted, greeted with popular enthusiasm? Why did men keep on fighting when conditions were so wretched? This title deals with questions.

The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the war on the eastern front. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline. This book deals with this battle.

'This vital history shatters many myths about the Nazi genocide . . . . surprising . . . provocative . . . fizzes with ideas. Even if you think you know the subject, you'll probably find something here to make you think' Sunday Times

'Erudite...remarkable' The Observer

'Outstanding' The Telegraph

An authoritative, revelatory new history of the Holocaust, from one of the leading scholars of his generation

The Holocaust is much-discussed, much-memorialized and much-portrayed. But there are majo...

'A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.

Tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population in America, only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists.