Showing titles in 20th Century

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER A Times Best History Book of the Year; A Waterstones Best Book of the Year 'Reads like a thriller… I couldn't put Max Hastings's new book down' DAILY MAIL 'Hastings is a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier' THE TIMES...

A Holocaust historian, archivist, and history blogger adds a new dimension to the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during World War II, shining a long overdue spotlight on five young, Polish Jewish women—champions who helped lead the resistance, sabotage the Nazis, and aid Jews in hiding...

For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.

Frank Blaichman was 16 years old when the war broke out. In 1942, the killings began in Poland. With his family and friends decimated by the roundups, Blaichman decided that he would rather die fighting; he set off for the forest to find the underground bunkers of Jews who had already escaped. Together they formed a partisan force dedicated to fighting the Germans. This is a harrowing, utterly moving memoir of a young Polish Jew who chose not to go quietly and defied the mighty German war machine during World War II.

Brought to you by Penguin. ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2025 ** A thrilling and unprecedented account of the radicalism and political extremism that gripped the 1970s – a seismic decade that transformed the modern world. In the 1970s, a network of extremists terrorised the West...

Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family blind enemies by slashing them with the disposable safety razor blades stitched in to the peaks of their flat caps, as they fight bloody gangland wars involving Irish terrorists and the authorities led by a devious Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. But who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist? Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, has spent decades searching them out.

The famous D-Day landings of 6 June, 1944, marked the beginning of Operation Overlord, the battle for the liberation of Europe. Republished as part of the Pan Military Classics series, Max Hastings’ acclaimed account overturns many traditional legends in this memorable study. Drawing together the eyewitness accounts of survivors from both sides, plus a wealth of previously untapped sources and documents, Overlord provides a brilliant, controversial perspective on the devastating battle.

The compulsively readable new book from The Rest is Classified host Gordon Corera. About how one man – Vasili Mitrokhin – turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West. How do you steal a library? Not...

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ESCAPE ARTIST A THE ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Magnificent . . . Important and impressive' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Astonishing . . . Freedland is a master' MICK HERRON 'Remarkable . . . This is how the best history books will be written in the...

Brought to you by Penguin. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NEW STATESMAN, ATLANTIC AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR A spellbinding narrative history of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and its devastating consequences by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia. Before the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen “With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism...

Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realizing what this entailed.

1973. Ten men, shipwrecked and alone in a life raft on the wild Southern Ocean off Tasmania, are declared dead by the authorities. Can they survive the unsurvivable? This is the astonishing story of the sinking of the coastal freighter the M.V. Blythe Star, which sparked the most extensive sea and air search at the time and left ten men, including 18-year-old Mick Doleman, in a tiny life raft at the mercy of the wild southern ocean – and all given up for dead.

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days.

In June 1992, Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not—as other British colonies over the decades—for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. Over the next five years, he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese.

'Compelling' TELEGRAPH 'Such a compelling account of a small but significant dark corner of history... Profound, angry, and tender all at once' VIRGINIA FEITO, author of MRS MARCH 'An insightful, empathetic and well-researched account of a deeply fascinating and macabre true story' KATE MOORE...

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

It is 1940, and the Final Solution is about to begin. The Nazis have occupied The Netherlands, but resistance is growing and two Jewish sisters - Janny and Lien Brilleslijper - are risking their lives to save those being hunted, through their clandestine safehouse 'The High Nest'. It becomes one of the most important safehouses in the country, but when the house and its occupants are betrayed, the most terrifying time of the sisters' lives begins. This is the beginning of the end. 

Throughout the twentieth century, in theaters, ballrooms, and nightclubs, dancers blazed trails of resistance and revolution. From the exuberant endurance of dance marathons during Prohibition to the militant precision of the Rockettes through WWII and the strait-laced fifties; from the aloof...

A New York Times Bestseller “I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah “Dr. Eger’s...