Few leaders in history have been as mythologized as Michael Collins. Before his death at 31, he had fought in the Easter Rising, organized the IRA and out-spied British intelligence, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and run the first independent government in Ireland. Peter Hart’s groundbreaking biography restores humanity to this mythical figure. Drawing on previously unknown sources, delving into Collins’s pre-revolutionary past, and assessing the methods—and the costs—of his rise to power, Mick reveals a man of often ruthless ambition, more politician than soldier, whose friendships went no farther than his interests. A work as thrilling as it is authoritative.

Mick: The Real Michael Collins

Biographies & Memoirs

Hart, Peter

Historical

Penguin Publishing Group

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2013 by The Economist World War I altered the landscape of the modern world in every conceivable arena. Millions died; empires collapsed; new ideologies and political movements arose; poison gas, warplanes, tanks, submarines, and other technologies appeared. "Total war" emerged as a grim, mature reality. In The Great War, Peter Hart provides a masterful combat history of this global conflict. Focusing on the decisive engagements, Hart explores the immense challenges faced by the commanders on all sides. He surveys the belligerent nations, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and strategic imperatives. Russia, for example, was obsessed with securing an exit from the Black Sea, while France--having lost to Prussia in 1871, before Germany united--constructed a network of defensive alliances, even as it held a grudge over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Hart offers deft portraits of the commanders, the prewar plans, and the unexpected obstacles and setbacks that upended the initial operations.

The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Peter Hart, then a young oral historian at the Imperial War Museum in London, conducted 183 interviews with British World War I veterans. After the death of the last veteran in 2009, these interviews have become a rare and invaluable record of the Great War, as remembered by the men who experienced it. The men spoke to Hart of the familiar horrors of the war-poison gas, lice, muddy trenches, newly minted tanks, and sinking ships-enriching each memory with personal anecdote, shedding light on war's effect on soldiers both in wartime and during the years that followed. Hart now returns to these interviews in Voices from the Front. His new book not only provides a narrative timeline of the events of 1914 to 1918, but restores individuality and humanity to the men who were often treated like expendable resources. Hart uses the transcripts of these conversations as a framework on which to build a unique depiction of Britain's experience of the war-one separated from the boastful exaggerations or, alternatively, the underplaying euphemisms often found in letters mailed home or to fellow soldiers. By including the testimonies of men such as William Holbrook, who was just 15 when he enlisted, as well as Harold Bing, an anti-war demonstrator, Hart breathes new life into the experiences of both young soldiers and those who morally opposed the war. The result is history as both narrative and recollection; war experienced first-hand but looked at now from a great distance. Here is an intimate and humanized account of the first great cataclysm of the twentieth century, one endured by the men whose voices we hear in this book, and whose legacies are with us still.

Voices from the Front: An Oral History of the Great War

Author of The Great War, as well as celebrated accounts of the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Jutland, and Gallipoli, historian Peter Hart now turns to World War One's final months. Much has been made of-and written about-August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves, and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four years, the endgame seems to come as a stunning anticlimax. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 the guns simply fell silent. The Last Battle definitively corrects this misperception. As Hart shows, a number of factors precipitated the Armistice. After four years of bloodshed, Germany was nearly bankrupt and there was a growing rift between the military High Command and political leadership. But it also remained a determined combatant, and France and Great Britain had equally been stretched to their limits; Russia had abandoned the conflict in the late winter of 1918. However complex the causes of Germany's ultimate defeat, Allied success on the Western Front, as Hart reveals, tipped the scales-the triumphs at the Fifth Battle of Ypres, the Sambre, the Selle, and the Meuse-Argonne, where American forces made arguably their greatest contribution. The offensives cracked the Hindenburg Line and wore down the German resistance, precipitating collapse. Final victory came at great human cost and involved the combined efforts of millions of men. Using the testimony of a range of participants, from the Doughboys, Tommies, German infantrymen, and French poilus who did the fighting, to those in command during those last days and weeks, Hart brings intimacy and sweep to the events that led to November 11, 1918.

The Last Battle: Victory, Defeat, and the End of World War I

Americas

This book explores the lives, deaths, enemies, and victims of the most powerful guerrillas of twentieth-century Ireland: those of the Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923. Drawing on an unprecedented body of sources, including numerous interviews this is a uniquely intimate study of revolution, guerrilla war, and ethnic conflict.

The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923

This book explores the lives, deaths, enemies, and victims of the most powerful guerrillas of twentieth-century Ireland: those of the Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923. Drawing on an unprecedented body of sources, including numerous interviews this is a uniquely intimate study of revolution, guerrilla war, and ethnic conflict.

The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923

The I.R.A. at War 1916-1923

The essays in The I.R.A. at War propose a new history of this Irish revolution: one that encompasses the whole of the island as well as Britain, all of the violence and its consequences, and the entire period from the Easter Rising to the end of the Civil War. Using new research and questioning old assumptions, these sparkling essays by Peter Hart address these and other controversies to suggest new ways of looking at the history of the Irish Revolution of 1916-23.

One of the most famous battles in history, the WWI Gallipoli campaign began as a bold move by the British to capture Constantinople, but this definitive new history explains that from the initial landings--which ended with so much blood in the sea it could be seen from airplanes overhead--to the desperate attacks of early summer and the battle of attrition that followed, it was a tragic folly destined to fail from the start. Gallipoli forced the young Winston Churchill from office, established Turkey's iconic founder Mustafa Kemal (better known as "Ataturk"), and marked Australia's emergence as a nation in its own right. Drawing on unpublished eyewitness accounts by individuals from all ranks--not only from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, but from Turkey and France as well--Peter Hart weaves first-hand stories into a vivid narrative of the battle and its aftermath. Hart, a historian with the Imperial War Museum and a battlefield tour guide at Gallipoli, provides a vivid, boots-on-the-ground account that brilliantly evokes the confusion of war, the horrors of combat, and the grim courage of the soldiers. He provides an astute, unflinching assessment of the leaders as well. He shows that the British invasion was doomed from the start, but he places particular blame on General Sir Ian Hamilton, whose misplaced optimism, over-complicated plans, and unwillingness to recognize the gravity of the situation essentially turned likely failure into complete disaster. Capturing the sheer drama and bravery of the ferocious fighting, the chivalry demonstrated by individuals on both sides amid merciless wholesale slaughter, and the futility of the cause for which ordinary men fought with extraordinary courage and endurance--Gallipoli is a riveting account of a battle that continues to fascinate us close to a hundred years after the event.

Gallipoli

Australia & Oceania

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hart, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hart, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hart, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mick: The Real Michael Collins

The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War

Voices from the Front: An Oral History of the Great War

The Last Battle: Victory, Defeat, and the End of World War I

The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923

The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923

The I.R.A. at War 1916-1923

The I.R.A. at War 1916-1923

Gallipoli

Gallipoli