An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen 'warriors' from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings. Over the course of forty years of writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) -- and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history -- including Napoleon's 'blessed fool' Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke's Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the 'dam buster' whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation's admiration, but few friends. Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be -- and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry -- and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.

Warriors

Biographies & Memoirs

MAX HASTINGS

Leaders & Notable People

Harper-perennial

With an introduction read by Max Hastings. A companion volume to his bestselling Armageddon, Max Hastings' account of the battle for Japan is a masterful military history. Featuring the most remarkable cast of commanders the world has ever seen, the dramatic battle for Japan of 1944-45 was acted out across the vast stage of Asia: Imphal and Kohima, Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Soviet assault on Manchuria. In this gripping narrative, Max Hastings weaves together the complex strands of an epic war, exploring the military tactics behind some of the most triumphant and most horrific scenes of the 20th century. The result is a masterpiece that balances the story of command decisions, rivalries, and follies with the experiences of soldiers, sailors, and airmen of all sides as only Max Hastings can.

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

History

Military

HarperPress

The extraordinary story of the eccentric family of Britain's most outstanding military historian, Max Hastings. The author is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and journalist and gardening writer Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and essays, and penned an enchanting memoir of his own Victorian childhood. His great-uncle was an African hunter who wrote poetry and became one of Max's heroes. The author tells a richly picaresque story, featuring guest appearances by a host of celebrities from Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, who became Anne Scott-James's third husband. 'All families are dysfunctional', Anne asserted impenitently to Max, but the Hastingses managed to be more dysfunctional than most. His father roamed the world for newspapers and as a presenter for BBC TV's legendary Tonight programme, while his mother edited `Harper's Bazaar', became a famous columnist and wrote bestselling gardening books. Here, the author brings together this remarkable cast of forebears, 'a tribe of eccentrics', as he himself characterises them. By turns moving, dramatic and comic, the book portrays Max's own childhood fraught with rows and explosions, in which the sudden death of a television set was only one highlight. His story will make a lot of people laugh and perhaps a few cry. It helps to explain why Max Hastings, whose family has produced more than eighty books over three generations, felt bound to follow their path of high adventure and popular journalism.

Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable

HarperCollins, Publishers

Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

Pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings presents Winston Churchill as he has never been seen before. Winston Churchill was the greatest war leader Britain ever had. In 1940, the nation rallied behind him in an extraordinary fashion. But thereafter, argues Max Hastings, there was a deep divide between what Churchill wanted from the British people and their army, and what they were capable of delivering. Himself a hero, he expected others to show themselves heroes also, and was often disappointed. It is little understood how low his popularity fell in 1942, amid an unbroken succession of battlefield defeats. Some of his closest colleagues joined a clamour for him to abandon his role directing the war machine. Hastings paints a wonderfully vivid image of the Prime Minister in triumph and tragedy. He describes the 'second Dunkirk' in 1940, when Churchill's impulsiveness threatened to lose Britain almost as many troops in north-west France as had been saved from the beaches; his wooing of the Americans, and struggles with the Russians. British wartime unity was increasingly tarnished by workers' unrest, with many strikes in mines and key industries.By looking at Churchill from the outside in, through the eyes of British soldiers, civilians and newspapers, and also those of Russians and Americans, Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman. He condemns as folly Churchill's attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe, and details 'Unthinkable', his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. Here is an intimate and affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britain's saviour, but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led and the performance of its armed forces.REMEMBER NEW BOOKS MAKE GREAT AND AFFORDABLE GIFTS!WE ARE A SMALL FAMILY RUN BUSINESS WITH A LOVE FOR BOOKS AND CATS!(BENTLEY, OUR CAT, HELPS TOO, USUALLY SLEEPING BESIDE ME WHILE I WORK)OUR AIM IS TO PROVIDE YOU WITH LOVEL

All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945

A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world- soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives, farm workers and children. Reflecting Max Hastings's thirty-five years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events, but focuses chiefly upon human experience, which varied immensely from campaign to campaign, continent to continent. The author emphasises the Russian front, where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate. He argues that, while Hitler's army often fought its battles brilliantly well, the Nazis conducted their war effort with `stunning incompetence'. He suggests that the Royal Navy and US Navy were their countries' outstanding fighting services, while the industrial contribution of the United States was much more important to allied victory than that of the US Army. The book ranges across a vast canvas, from the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion, to the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least a million people died under British rule- and British neglect. Among many vignettes, there are the RAF's legendary raid on the Ruhr dams, the horrors of Arctic convoys, desert tank combat, jungle clashes. Some of Hastings's insights and judgements will surprise students of the conflict, while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies and triumphs of a host of ordinary people, in uniform and out of it. `The cliche is profoundly true', he says. `The world between 1939 and 1945 saw some human beings plumb the depths of baseness, while others scaled the heights of courage and nobility'. This is `everyman's story', an attempt to answer the question: `What was the Second World War like ?', and also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings employs the technique which has made many of his previous books best-sellers, combining top-down analysis and bottom-up testimony to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its participants and for posterity.

Harper Collins Ome

<p>Paperback. Pub Date :2013-09-12 Pages: 672 Language: English A magisterial chronicle of the calamity that crippled Europe in 1914.1914: a year of unparalleled change The year that diplomacy failed. Imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and. white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machine-guns What followed were the costliest days of the entire War But how had it happenedIn Catastrophe:.. 1914 Max Hastings. best-selling author of the acclaimed All Hell Let Loose. answers at last how World War I could ever have begun Ranging across Europe. from Paris to St Petersberg. from Kings to corporals. Catastrophe 1914 traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles;.. not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a ...</p>

Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914

Europe

China Press

Finest Years Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

Harper Press

VIETNAM AN EPIC TRAGEDY 1945-1975

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975

<p>Shelf wear to dust jacket, a bit of a wave to the page edges. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.</p>

Harper

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

Books by MAX HASTINGS

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

Warriors

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable

Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945

Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914

Finest Years Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

VIETNAM AN EPIC TRAGEDY 1945-1975

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975