A riveting, real-life thriller about 1983--the year tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon The year 1983 was an extremely dangerous one--more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the United States, President Reagan vastly increased defense spending, described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," and launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the country from incoming missiles. Seeing all this, Yuri Andropov, the paranoid Soviet leader, became convinced that the US really meant to attack the Soviet Union and he put the KGB on high alert, looking for signs of an imminent nuclear attack. When a Soviet plane shot down a Korean civilian jet, Reagan described it as "a crime against humanity." And Moscow grew increasingly concerned about America's language and behavior. Would they attack? The temperature rose fast. In November the West launched a wargame exercise, codenamed "Abel Archer," that looked to the Soviets like the real thing. With Andropov's finger inching ever closer to the nuclear button, the world was truly on the brink. This is an extraordinary and largely unknown Cold War story of spies and double agents, of missiles being readied, intelligence failures, misunderstandings, and the panic of world leaders. With access to hundreds of astonishing new documents, Taylor Downing tells for the first time the gripping but true story of how near the world came to nuclear war in 1983.

1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink

History

Downing, Taylor

Americas

Da Capo Press

A companion volume to the twenty-four-part documentary on the history of the Cold War ranges from the fall of Germany at the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Union. TV tie-in.

Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945-1991

Issacs, Jeremy

World

Little,Brown & Co

The loss of British bombers over Occupied Europe began to reach alarming levels in 1941. Could it be that the Germans were using a sophisticated form of radar to direct their night fighters and anti-aircraft guns at the British bombers? British aerial reconnaissance discovered what seemed to be a rotating radar tower on a clifftop at Bruneval, near Le Havre. The truth must be revealed. 
The decision was taken to launch a daring raid on the Bruneval site to try and capture the technology for further examination. The planned airborne assault would be extremely risky. The parachute regiment had only been formed a year before on Churchill's insistence. This night raid would test the men to the extreme limits of their abilities. 
Night Raid tells the gripping tale of this mission from the planning stages, to the failed rehearsals when the odds seemed stacked against them, to the night of the raid itself, and the scientific secrets that were discovered thanks to the paras' precious cargo - the German radar. Its capture was of immense importance in the next stages of the war and the mission itself marked the birth of the legend of the 'Red Devils'.

Night Raid: The True Story of the First Victorious British Para Raid of WWII

Europe

ABACUS +

The story of the half-century since the end of World War II
This history's framework is the confrontation, military and ideological, between two great powers that dominated the world during these years. It is a story of crises and conflict on a global scale: from the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the tanks in the streets of Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague, to spies, student riots, and encounters in space. Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing record epic history through the detail of individual human experience: the recollections not only of statesmen whose decisions led to these momentous events, but also of the ordinary men and women whose lives were bound up in these years of conflict. This is the first comprehensive history for the general reader to benefit from the recent opening of Soviet, East European, and Chinese archives as well as formerly classified American documents. In a driving narrative that it both gripping and informative, the true story of the Cold War can at last be told.

Cold War: For Forty-Five Years the World Held Its Breath

ISAACS, Jeremy

Little, Brown Book Group

SPIES IN THE SKY is the thrilling, little-known story of the partner organisation to the famous code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. It is the story of the daring reconnaissance pilots who took aerial photographs over Occupied Europe during the most dangerous days of the Second World War, and of the photo interpreters who invented a completely new science to analyse those pictures. They were inventive and ingenious; they pioneered the development of 3D photography and their work provided vital intelligence throughout the war.
With a whole host of colourful characters at its heart, from the legendary pilot Adrian 'Warby' Warburton, who went missing while on a mission, to photo interpreters Glyn Daniel, later a famous television personality, and Winston Churchill's daughter, Sarah, SPIES IN THE SKY is compelling reading and the first full account of the story of aerial photography and the intelligence gleaned from it in nearly fifty years.

Spies In The Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II

Children's Books

Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code Breakers and Propagandists of the Great War

Paralysis. Stuttering. The 'shakes'. Inability to stand or walk. Temporary blindness or deafness.
When strange symptoms like these began appearing in men at Casualty Clearing Stations in 1915, a debate began in army and medical circles as to what it was, what had caused it and what could be done to cure it. But the numbers were never large.
Then in July 1916 with the start of the Somme battle the incidence of shell shock rocketed. The high command of the British army began to panic. An increasingly large number of men seemed to have simply lost the will to fight. As entire battalions had to be withdrawn from the front, commanders and military doctors desperately tried to come up with explanations as to what was going wrong. 'Shell shock' - what we would now refer to as battle trauma - was sweeping the Western Front.
By the beginning of August 1916, nearly 200,000 British soldiers had been killed or wounded during the first month of fighting along the Somme. Another 300,000 would be lost before the battle was over. But the army always said it could not calculate the exact number of those suffering from shell shock. Re-assessing the official casualty figures, Taylor Downing for the first time comes up with an accurate estimate of the total numbers who were taken out of action by psychological wounds. It is a shocking figure.
Taylor Downing's revelatory new book follows units and individuals from signing up to the Pals Battalions of 1914, through to the horrors of their experiences on the Somme which led to the shell shock that, unrelated to weakness or cowardice, left the men unable to continue fighting. He shines a light on the official - and brutal - response to the epidemic, even against those officers and doctors who looked on it sympathetically. It was, they believed, a form of hysteria. It was contagious. And it had to be stopped.
Breakdown brings an entirely new perspective to bear on one of the iconic battles of the First World War.

Breakdown: The Crisis of Shell Shock on the Somme

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Battlestations is designed as an illustrated tie-in to the mini-series on the History Channel. A crucial factor in the Allied victory in World War II was the ability of industry, largely American, to produce sturdy, adaptable equipment in large numbers. The complete development and combat history of the Spitfire, DC-3, Sherman and DUKW is presented in detail, backed up by a rich array of previously unpublished color and black and white illustrations from European archives.

Battlestations: War Winning Weapons of the Second World War

Military

Pen_and_Sword

Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia is one of the most controversial films ever made. Capitalizing on the success of Triumph of the Will, her propaganda film for the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl secured Hitler's approval for her grandiose plans to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The result was a work as notorious for its politics as celebrated for its aesthetic power. Taylor Downing provides an indispensable guide to this major work of film documentary. He gives the full story of how Riefenstahl negotiated relative independence from the Nazi authorities by pitting Hitler against Goebbels, the propaganda minister, who wanted complete control. Downing also gives a filmmaker's insights into the logistical and technical problems thrown up by managing a production which employed nearly forty cameramen to shoot 400,000 metres of film. He concludes that though its political effect was to glorify Nazi achievements, the film undeniably set the standard for Olympic filmmaking for the next five decades.

Olympia (BFI Film Classics)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

British Film Institute

1st Little, Brown 2010 hardcover fine book in fine dw In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Churchill's War Lab: Code Breakers, Boffins and Innovators: the Mavericks Churchill Led to Victory

Little,Brown

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