A Spectator Book of the Year 2020\nA Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2020 
A Mail on Sunday Book of the Year 2020\n‘Inspired … Lowe’s sensitive, disturbing book should be compulsory reading for both statue builders and statue topplers’ MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES\nWhat happens when our values change, but what we have set in stone does not?\nHumankind has always had the urge to memorialise, to make physical testaments to the past. There’s just one problem: when we carve a statue or put up a monument, it can wind up holding us hostage to bad history. 
In this extraordinary history book, Keith Lowe uses monuments from around the world to show how different countries have attempted to sculpt their history in the wake of the Second World War, and what these memorials reveal about their politics and national identity today. 
Amongst many questions, the book asks: What does Germany signal to today’s far right by choosing not to disclose the exact resting place of Hitler? How can a bronze statue of a young girl in Seoul cause mass controversy? What is Russia trying to prove and hide, still building victory monuments at a prolific rate for a war now seventy years over? 
As many around the world are questioning who and what we memorialise, Prisoners of History challenges our idea of national memory, history, and the enormous power of symbols in society today.

Prisoners of History: What Monuments to the Second World War Tell Us About Our History and Ourselves

History

Lowe, Keith

Americas

William Collins

Tunnel Vision

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

MTV Books

In July of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg that was unlike anything the world had ever seen. For ten days they drenched the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month, and were visible for 200 miles. As those who survived emerged from their ruined cellars and air-raid shelters they were confronted with a unique vision of hell: a sea of flame that stretched to the horizon, the burnt-out husks of fire engines that had tried to rescue them, charcoaled corpses and roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac. Using many new first-hand accounts and other material, Keith Lowe gives the human side of an inhuman story, and the result is an epic story of devastation and survival, and a much-needed reminder of the human face of war.

Inferno: The Devastation Of Hamburg 1943

Europe

Penguin Uk

The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years...The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted-such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government-were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places-particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France-they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe toward the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.

Savage Continent Europe In The Aftermath Of World War II /anglais

In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs with the intention of erasing the German city from the map. The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead. 
Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force winds and 800-degree temperatures; of survivors cowering in basements or struggling along melting streets; of a city and its people near annihilated from above. 
Inferno is an epic story of human devastation and survival against impossible odds.

Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943

Penguin

The bestselling, prize-winning author explores the impact of the Second World War - for nations, cities and families around the world.How does the experience and memory of the Second World War - one of the most catastrophic events in human history - affect our lives today?The years after 1945 were a time of both terror and wonder, whose impact still dominates our lives. Out of the ashes of war came the superpowers and nations of the modern world. From the new technologies delivered by scientists came the possibility of nuclear war. Politicians fantasized about overhauled societies, with some arguing for global government, others for independence, leading to the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today.As well as analyzing the major changes and the myths that emerged, The Fear and the Freedom uses individual stories to examine the philosophical and psychological impact of the war, by showing how leaders and ordinary people coped with the post-war world and turned one of the greatest traumas in history into an opportunity for change. This is the definitive exploration of the aftermath of WWII - and the impact it still has.' Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them' - Theodore Zeldin, author of 'The Hidden Pleasures of Life' and 'An Intimate History Of Humanity'' Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons' - James Holland' Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling ' - Sunday Times' A masterpiece of historical painstakingly researched, cleverly constructed and elegantly written . In surveying such a diverse panorama, Lowe displays a sensitivity to the human condition - how we got to where we are now - that is as unusual as it is welcome' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph'The Fear and The Freedom is a deft blend of historical research, moving interviews, and challenging psychological insights. Lowe writes with elegance and perception. A truly illuminating read ' - Jonathan Dimbleby'Keith Lowe has written an eloquent meditation on the aftermath and the long psychological tentacles of the Second World War . Beautifully written and profoundly perceptive, The Fear and the Freedom confirms Lowe as one of our finest historians' - Antony Beevor

Fear and the Freedom

RANDOM HOUSE UK

Inferno; the Devastation of Hamburg 1943

Scribner

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Military

Viking Press

The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters

VIKING

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