Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in 20th Century

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.

By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.

With unparalleled access to Taiwan’s political leaders and a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides an updated reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. This is the essential book delving into Taiwan’s unique story, buried beneath the headlines, told in an accessible, expert and urgent way.

Award-winning journalist and author Andrew Rule distils the daring, the desperation and danger of the track into a bravura account of some of Australian racing's most famous and infamous moments, its celebrations and its secrets, the grittiness of the gambling life behind the glitz and glamour. With an ear for the colloquial, the humorous and the absurd, and an eye for physical bravery and financial folly, Rule shows how racing still defines part of the Australian character.

The Age of Extremes is eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm's personal vision of the 20th century. Remarkable in its scope, and breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, this immensely rewarding book reviews the uniquely destructive and creative nature of the troubled 20th century and makes challenging predicitions for the future.

In the end, it's not what happens to us that matters most - it's what we choose to do with it. We all face suffering - sadness, loss, despair, fear, anxiety, failure. But we also have a choice; to give in and give up in the face of trauma or difficulties or to live every moment as a gift. Celebrated therapist and Holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the imprisoning thoughts and destructive behaviours that may be holding us back.

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another.

When Hannah's family flee from the Nazis to Amsterdam, she soon strikes up a friendship with a girl just like her freshly arrived from Germany. Precocious and outspoken, the girl's name is Anne Frank and for seven blissful years the inseparable pair navigate school, boys and coming of age.

In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.

In this compelling book, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history - part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed.

On 30th January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the German chancellor of a coalition government by President Hindenburg. Within a few months he had installed a dictatorship, jailing and killing his left-wing opponents, terrorising the rest of the population and driving Jews out of public life. In The Hitler Years, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand.

King Charles faces many challenges as he succeeds his mother to the throne. Despite his hard work and genuine concern for the disadvantaged, King Charles III has struggled in the past to overcome his unpopularity. After Diana’s death, his approval rating crashed to 4% and has been only rescued by his marriage to Camilla. In unearthing many secrets and dramas surrounding King Charles, Bower’s book, relies on the testimony from over 120 people employed or welcomed into the inner sanctum.

Few, if any, 20th-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him. Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Kershaw's study charts the creation, growth, and decline of the Hitler myth.

Thomas Geve was just 15 years old when he was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp on 11th April 1945. It was the third concentration camp he had survived. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Thomas was separated from his mother and left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I, at the age of 13. During the 22 months he was imprisoned, he was subjected to and forced to observe first-hand the inhumane world of Nazi concentration camps.

Wallis in Love brings a fascinating new perspective on the 20th century's most controversial royal scandal. Andrew Morton's impeccable research and unerring skill for riveting storytelling combine to present a strong case for a new and startling reveal: that the woman who rocked the world with her uncompromising passion for the Prince of Wales may have fooled everyone by keeping the object of her true passion hidden away....

Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-41 offers a penetrating insight into a series of momentous political decisions that shaped the course of the Second World War. The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined.

Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody.

A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. Shirer’s Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, appeared in 1941. Shirer returned to the European front in 1944 to cover the end of the war. End of a Berlin Diary chronicles this year-long study of Germany after Hitler.

In 1990, a country disappeared. For the previous forty-one years, East Germany had existed in Western minds as more of a metaphor than a place, more of a grey communist blur than a land of real people with friends and families, workplaces and homes. As Germany once again became a single state, the history of the GDR was simplified and politicised. It was nothing but Stasi spies and central planning, nothing but a wall in Berlin. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer looks past these outdated conceptions and toward a more comprehensive history.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.