Showing titles in Modern

With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918–1920 was the greatest human disaster. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I. Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain and from South Africa to Odessa. She shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered, and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test.

For the very first time, The War That Never Was tells the fascinating story of a secret war fought by British mercenaries in the Yemen in the early 1960s. In a covert operation organised over whisky and sodas in the clubs of Chelsea and Mayfair, a group of former SAS officers.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

Originally intended as a trainer, the Anglo-French Sepecat jet, equipped with the very latest in weapon-aiming and navigational equipment, eventually became the backbone of the RAF's tactical strike-attack and recce forces for a decade from the mid-1970s. In these minutes, the Jaguar Boys - pilots, engineer, and ground crew - tell of the aircraft's drawbacks and joys, their sadness at losses, and their pleasure at its development into a readily deployable and outstandingly capable fighter-bomber for the post-Cold War era.

John Larson, Gus Vollmer and Leonarde Keeler hoped the lie detector would make the justice system fairer—but the flawed device soon grew too powerful for them to control. It poisoned their lives, turned fast friends into bitter enemies and as it conquered America and the world, it transformed our relationship with the truth in ways that are still being felt.

By the best-selling author of All Out War, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2017. The unmissable account of politics covering Theresa May's time as PM through to the end of the election campaign. Stuffed to the brim with revelation and explanation of political debates and arguments and a superb follow-up to All Out War.

Gripping and unforgettable, Chernobyl Roulette sounds the alarm about the dangers of nuclear sites in an unprecedented time, when plant workers are left to fight on their own while the world holds its breath. In a book that feels like a thriller, Serhii Plokhy tells a remarkable story about human nature, uncertainty and courage.

Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the US. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than 70 indictments. And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years.

Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed.

In this groundbreaking account, Elisabeth Braw explores the collapse of globalization and the profound challenges it will bring to the West. Drawing on interviews with prominent executives and policymakers from around the world, Braw poses the difficult questions all businesses and economies will face-and traces the intricate story of globalization from the exuberant 90s to the embattled present.

More than seven decades after the end of the Second World War, the era of the Nazi hunters is drawing to a close as they and the hunted die off. Their saga can now be told almost in its entirety. After the Nuremberg trials and the start of the Cold War, most of the victors in World War II lost interest in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Many of the lower-ranking perpetrators quickly blended in with the millions who were seeking to rebuild their lives in a new Europe, while those who felt most at risk fled the continent.

In Leningrad: Siege and Symphony, Brian Moynahan sets the composition of Shostakovich's most famous work against the tragic canvas of the siege itself and the years of repression and terror that preceded it. Drawing on extensive primary research in archives as well as personal letters and diaries, he vividly tells the story of the cruelties heaped by the twin monsters of the 20th century, Stalin and Hitler, on a city of exquisite beauty, and of its no less remarkable survival.

Six-time New York Times best-selling author and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright - one of the world’s most admired and tireless public servants - reflects on the final stages of one’s career, and working productively into your later decades in this revealing, funny, and inspiring memoir.

In the years since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many myths, legends, and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia. Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of soldiering and lifesaving.

At some point in the 1980s we gave up on the future. Before then, we imagined wonderful days to come, free from disease, work and want, in television series like Star Trek or events such as the 1939 Futurama World Fair. When we look ahead now, we tell dystopian stories of environmental collapse, zombie plagues and the end of civilisation. If it is true that we have to imagine the future before we build it, then this is deeply worrying.

Thirty-five years after the publication of Ronald Blythe's classic portrait of an English village, Akenfield, Craig Taylor returned to the Suffolk village on which the book was based. He sought out locals who appeared in the original book to learn how their lives had changed, met newcomers, and interviewed Ronald Blythe himself.

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

This fresh new account of the liberation, packed with revelation, tells the story of those heady days of suspense, danger, exhilaration – and vengeance – through the eyes of a range of participants, reflecting all sides of the conflict: Americans, French and Germans; resisters and collaborators. Among them are famous names like Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger and Pablo Picasso, but also some fascinating unknowns including a medic turned Resistance gunwoman, an androgynous Hungarian sculptor and a French bluestocking who quietly set about saving the nation’s art treasures from the Nazi looters.

Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers.

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years, Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash. It wasn't always like this though. Once Everest was remote and inaccessible, a mysterious place, where only the bravest and most heroic dared to tread. The first attempt on Everest in 1922 by George Leigh Mallory and a British team is an extraordinary story full of controversy, drama and incident, populated by a set of larger-than-life characters.