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Forgotten Soldiers is an enthralling work of military history that shows how the courage, intelligence or simple good fortune of the individual can exert a decisive influence on the outcome of a battle or campaign. It tells the stories of fifteen unsung heroes, none of a rank higher than major, whose deeds changed the course of important battles and - arguably - the course of history. These vivid and gripping accounts - largely drawn from the Second World War, but with tales too from other conflicts - have each been selected to illustrate one of the dictums of the great Prussian theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, about the importance of having the right man in the right place at the right...
The “gripping story” of a Nazi blockade, a Russian composer, and a ragtag band of musicians who fought to keep up a besieged city’s morale (The New York Times Book Review). For 872 days during World War II, the German Army encircled the city of Leningrad—modern-day St. Petersburg—in a military operation that would cripple the former capital and major Soviet industrial center. Palaces were looted and destroyed. Schools and hospitals were bombarded. Famine raged and millions died, soldiers and innocent civilians alike. Against the backdrop of this catastrophe, historian Brian Moynahan tells the story of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose Seventh Symphony was first performed during the siege ...
Arctic explorer, survival expert and naturalist Freddy Spencer Chapman was trapped behind enemy lines when the Japanese overran Malaya in 1942. His response was to begin a commando campaign of such lethal effectiveness that the Japanese deployed an entire regiment against him, hunting for him as they did for no other. He was wounded, and racked by tropical disease. His companions were killed, or captured and then beheaded. Cut off from friendly forces, his only shelter the deep jungle, Chapman held out for three years and five months. Jungle Soldier recounts the thrilling and unforgettable adventures of the north country orphan who survived against all odds to become a legend of guerrilla warfare.
First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History...
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin came to St. Petersburg from his Siberian cabin in 1903 like a projectile from the medieval past, tattered, black-clad, muttering. By the time he was murdered thirteen years later, the peasant was the "beloved" Friend of Tsar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra and the sponsor of the most powerful officials in Russia. He had become, a society lady wrote, "a dusk enveloping all our world, eclipsing the sun. How could so pitiful a wretch throw so vast a shadow? It was inexplicable, maddening, almost incredible. " Rasputin's name has become synonymous with evil, but his legend has obscured the facts of his life. In this evocative biography, Brian Moynahan presents us with a...
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Shows how the French imagination, in entertainment, sports, arts, science, and technology, continues today to influence the world.
Brian Moynahan, formerly the European editor of the Sunday Times, here combines his wide knowledge of Russia's social, political and military history into a thorough, splendidly written survey of the forces that led Russia to revolution twice during this century. Making ample use of contemporary letters, memoirs and documents, he traces Russia's course from the last days of the tsars to the present day and looks at what the future may hold. With eight pages of stunning photographs and an introduction that includes a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, this remarkable book is destined to become a standard short history of Russia in the twentieth century.
William Tyndale left England in 1524 to translate the word of God into English. This was heresy, punishable by death. Sir Thomas More, hailed as a saint and a man for all seasons, considered it his divine duty to pursue Tyndale. He did so with an obsessive ferocity that, in all probability, led to Tyndale's capture and death. The words that Tyndale wrote during his desperate exile--his New Testament, which he translated, edited, financed, printed, and smuggled into England in 1526--passed with few changes into subsequent versions of the Bible. Brian Moynahan's biography illuminates Tyndale's life, chronicling the birth pangs of the Reformation, the wrath of Henry VIII, the sympathy of Anne Boleyn, and the consuming malice of Thomas More. Above all, it reveals the English Bible as a labor of love, for which a man in an age more spiritual than our own willingly gave his life.--From U.S. publisher's description.