Between 1913 and 1923 Ireland saw the emergence of the Ulster Volunteer Force resisting Irish home rule and, in response, the Irish Volunteers (later the IRA); then the First World War, the rise of Sinn Fein, intense Ulster Unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish War of Independence. Drawing on recently released archives, witness statements and the testimony of ordinary people, Ferriter's study reveals the gulf between reality and the rhetoric surrounding the politics and violence of that revolutionary period.

Giant historical figures such as Churchill and JFK appear to stand alone, but few reach such eminence without the support of a network of public and private relationships, starting with their families. This biographical study begins at Chartwell in the 1930s, with a secret business deal between Churchill and Joseph Kennedy, before exploring the complex links between the two dynasties, shedding new light on a transatlantic alliance that would shape world history. American-cut pages and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

The Second World War was not fought by Britain alone. India produced a volunteer army of two million - the largest in world history. This account reveals the hidden history of the country during the conflict. Through the voices of ordinary people - soldiers, nurses, peasants, labourers and prostitutes - it shows how mobilization introduced seismic economic, social and cultural change that shaped the war, hastened the unravelling of the British Empire and set the course of India's future.

A Canadian-American philosopher and close associate of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff (b.1933) was a foremost exponent of Rand's Objectivist philosophy; his Ominous Parallels (1982) was an Objectivist analysis of the ideals that led to the Third Reich, and a warning of the threat of totalitarianism in America. The present volume, published in 2013, is about two-thirds of that earlier work, leaving aside the warning in favour of the explanation of the rise of Nazism.

The oratory with which Winston Churchill rallied the nation during the Second World War has become legendary, yet beyond a few phrases - 'blood, toil, tears and sweat', 'we shall fight on the beaches', 'their finest hour' - its substance remains little known. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of his wartime rhetoric, setting each speech in context and examining what it was intended to convey to - and conceal from - listeners at home and abroad.

In four substantial essays, Fleming discusses four books that had a significant influence on public opinion on Communism in post-war America and, to a lesser extent, France. The essays cover both the books' arguments and the remarkable - if not always admirable - careers of their authors: they are Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon (1940); Out of the Night (1941) by Richard Krebs aka Jan Valtin; Victor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom (1946); and Witness (1952) by Whittaker Chambers.

When India achieved independence in 1947, Britain portrayed the transfer of power as the fulfilment of a historic obligation after decades of responsible planning. This book shatters the myth. Drawing on letters, diaries and state papers, it exposes a shameful catalogue of secret attempts by British politicians and Whitehall mandarins to arrest the development of Indian political institutions, and the tragic consequences of these bungled intrigues in the appalling loss of life that accompanied Partition.

Sikkim, a tiny Buddhist kingdom sandwiched between India and China, survived the withdrawal of the British Empire and the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Then, in 1975, it was quietly annexed by India, bringing its 300-year-old dynasty to an end. Drawing on interviews and archive material, and retracing a 1922 journey by the author's grandfather, this book tells the remarkable story of this forgotten Shangri-La, its last king and his American wife, and the global power struggles that spelled its doom.

Recent events have propelled the secretive Communist state of North Korea into the news, but for six decades it has remained a mystery to outsiders. This interesting book includes 150 rare photos, many of them never seen before in the West, that chart the devastation of the war that gave it birth, and the determined reconstruction that followed. The accompanying essay by Balazs Szalontai recounts the untold story of how ordinary Koreans endured the conflict, and the totalitarian system that emerged from it.

Reclaiming TE Lawrence from hype and legend, this is a startling re-examination of his critical role in shaping the modern Middle East. With insights into Lawrence's views on discipline, his fear of failure and his lasting influence on military leadership, the study explores how an obscure British junior intelligence officer, unschooled in the art of war, became 'Lawrence of Arabia' and inspired the desert tribes to band together in an all-or-nothing insurgency against their Ottoman overlords. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Assessing the years between 1945 and the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Norman Stone shows how, for every success of the Atlantic powers, there seemed to be a dozen triumphs for the USSR and the Communist Bloc. He looks in depth at the confrontation of the Communist and capitalist worlds, investigating how, when even in the late 1970s the initiative still seemed to lie with the Soviets, suddenly, against all the odds, the Atlantic won economically, ideologically and militarily.

Richard Aldous's dual biography of Reagan and Thatcher dispels the myth of their 'special relationship', reveals the depth of their disagreement and shows how, confronted by the USSR, they struggled to overcome their differences.

Does the United States need its massive atomic arsenal in the 21st century? With his extensive experience of nuclear politics, Younger looks back at the development of these weapons of mass destruction.

The third and final volume of this definitive new history of Russia, part one comprises 13 essays, beginning with Russia's fin de siecle (1900-1914) and spanning the whole Soviet era, its demise and the Russian Federation up to Yeltsin's departure in 1999. In part two twelve essays explore themes and trends including transforming peasants in the 20th century; women and the state; science, technology and modernity; and foreign policy.

George Blake was entrusted with building up British intelligence networks behind the Iron Curtain, but was also a Soviet spy, and in 1961 he was sentenced to an unprecedented 42 years in jail. Drawing on interviews with Blake himself, hitherto unpublished records from his trial and new revelations about his dramatic jailbreak from Wormwood Scrubs, this biography examines both his Cold War treachery and his heroism during the Second World War.

The phrase 'Iron Curtain' was coined by Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946. But was it? This elegant, original and wide-ranging history traces the origins of the metaphor in a device to contain theatre fires, through its use to describe the blockade of the fledgling Soviet Union after the First World War, to its transformation into a brutal reality after the Second, and asks whether the curtain really came down with the Berlin Wall.

In May 1968, a group of activists burst into a draft board in a suburb of Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records and burned them with home-made napalm. Peters tells the story of the Nine's protest, their trials and their fates.

A grainy photograph that appeared in a Polish newspaper in 2008 caused national soul searching. It showed a group of peasants atop a mountain of ashes at Treblinka, searching for gold that had escaped the Nazis' attention - after the war had ended. In lucid prose, this moving book unsparingly recounts how the Holocaust was accompanied by the systematic theft of Jewish property, not only by their persecutors but also by their former neighbours and friends.

Drawing on a remarkable array of sources, this survey examines European attitudes to the USA in the wake of the 20th century's three great conflicts: the First and Second World Wars, and the Cold War.

Joshua B Freeman charts the USA's post-war achievements and challenges; its transformation from isolationist regional player to global superpower; and its slow decline in economic, political and military reach since the 1970s.

Steven A Cook offers a sweeping account of Egypt in the modern era, chronicling decisive episodes from the rise of Nasser to the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the 2011 demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

Gordon Thomas uses previously undisclosed sources to reassess the Vatican's response to the Holocaust and to reveal how Pope Pius XII helped to save Jewish lives and sabotage the Nazi war machine.

Through Daily Mirror articles and reportage photographs, this book offers a contemporary perspective on John F Kennedy's career, from his presidential election campaign to his assassination.

'It could have been worse,' an adviser told JF Kennedy after the failure of the disastrous US-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. 'How?' asked the President. 'It could have succeeded.' With clarity and narrative verve, Rasenberger reveals the behind-the-scenes machinations of the CIA, draws compelling portraits of the key players, traces what Kennedy knew, thought and felt as events unfolded, and charts the political fallout of one of the worst blunders in American history.

When Stalin died in 1953 he had established the 'Red Empire' which defined the Cold War world until the fall of the Berlin Wall. What were the motives behind Stalin's ruthless and spectacular power grab? Was he intent upon imperialist expansion for its own sake? Was he simply a psychopathic killer? Using previously unavailable sources Gellately argues that Stalin is better understood as a life-long Leninist revolutionary who saw the Second World War as a chance to further the Communist mission.

The Spanish Civil War is largely known through the accounts of outsiders such as Orwell and Hemingway, with the long years of Franco's dictatorship seen as an era of silence and suppression. This compelling investigation dispels this myth, demonstrating how the memory of these events was kept alive in novels, films, paintings and sculpture. Interviewing the descendants of those killed by the regime, it examines how, in recent years, the country has begun to come to terms with its past.

Graham Farmelo traces Churchill's association with nuclear weapons in a study of political and scientific intrigues which reveal a little-known side of Britain's great war leader.

Despite being German and a former member of the Communist Party, Klaus Fuchs was granted British citizenship at the height of the Second World War and invited to contribute to research on the atomic bomb. The physicist moved to America in 1943 to work on the Manhattan Project, all the time passing vital information to the Russians. This biography assesses Fuchs's value as a scientist and as a spy as he traded the greatest secrets of the age.

British history in the 20th century is too often seen as a long, slow decline. This concise, accessible book offers a refreshing alternative. Drawing on speeches, diaries, correspondence, newspapers and other primary sources, it focuses instead on the nation's capacity to adapt and reinvent itself in changing circumstances, through two world wars, the dismantling of empire, defence and diplomacy in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the Cold War, and membership of the European Union.

This full-length study of the drawing of the Indo-Pakistani boundary in Punjab in 1947 paints a vivid picture of both the partition process and the impact of the Radcliffe line on Punjab. Studies in Imperialism series.

Examining the ideas and policies that characterized Austrofascism in the 1930s, Thorpe provides a fresh perspective on the debate over whether pre-Anschluss Austria was an authoritarian or fascist state.

Although now consigned to history, the Cold War remains a vivid memory for many, and the events of the period between the 1940s and 1991 are still echoed in conflicts around the world today. Using nearly 150 photographs and reproductions, each accompanied by a detailed caption, this book depicts both the high-level political and military stand-off and what the Cold War meant for ordinary men and women during the 'delicate balance of terror' years.

Combining narrative verve with meticulous scholarship, this brilliant chronicle charts the vicissitudes of a tempestuous century. Starting at the dawn of an era ripe with promise, it shows how empires fell, leaving wars, revolutions, economic depressions and totalitarian regimes in their wake. It also examines the details of everyday life - how children were raised, why cities expanded, and the effects of technology and mass media - before concluding with the fall of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of Islam.

Beyond the affluent centre of Paris, in the deprived banlieues, a war is going on between the French state and the former subjects of its colonial empire. Here, Andrew Hussey tells the strange and complex story of the turbulent relationship between secular France and Muslim North Africa, from Napoleon to the Arab Spring, and assesses the challenges posed by the legions of dispossessed for whom the mantra 'liberty, fraternity, equality' is no more than a bitter irony.

By the outbreak of war in 1939, the 30,000 Austrians already in Britain became 'enemy aliens'. This study examines the achievements of the Austrian Centre, the cultural and political life of the refugees, and the often fraught relations with their British hosts.

Michael Schoenhals' study of covert operations during the first 18 years of Mao Zedong's China uses detailed examination of agents' recruitment, training and operations to reveal a vast surveillance and control apparatus. No jacket.

In 1904, 3,000 British soldiers, aided by 7,000 sherpas and led by the explorer Francis Younghusband, marched on the Tibetan capital Lhasa during the power struggle with Russia known as the Great Game. The invasion came to an ignominious end, defeated by poorly armed Tibetans and the distant machinations of London and Peking. First published in 1961, this classic history brings vividly to life a forgotten episode of British imperial history.

The American experience of the Vietnam War is widely known, but the Vietnamese people's own story of that brutal and drawn-out conflict is rarely told. This classic work of oral history, first published in 1986, brings together the accounts of ordinary people from both North and South Vietnam - soldiers, guerrillas, monks, opposition leaders, propaganda chiefs and village secretaries - to reveal the profound trauma and remarkable resilience of a nation in the grip of war and revolution.

In chapters on Spanish republican refugees in France, French people fleeing German invasion, Polish Displaced Persons and post-Holocaust Jews seeking to travel to Israel in 1945-48, this study explores the deep alienation to the nation state experienced by people forced to struggle to survive or flee in wartime Europe. The authors draw on eyewitness writings to examine the transformative journey of the refugee and its effects on individuals and on the societies through which they travelled.

Modern Europe has been shaped by 'ethnic cleansing' - the state-ordered expulsion of populations on the grounds of national identity. This important study brings together historians from across the continent to demonstrate how millions were brutally displaced from their homelands, first during the expansion of the Third Reich and then, after its defeat, by the new states that emerged from its ashes. It reveals a complex and troubling pattern of expulsion and exile that reverberates to this day.

From the Gulf War of 1991 to 9/11 in 2001, Alwyn Turner's survey of the 90s shows how the 'New Britain' of John Major and Tony Blair was marked by economic inequality in a culturally classless society.