Keller, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, analyzes the nexus between invention and culture in this incisive and instructive cultural history cum biography. Her subject is the iconic Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun, and its inventor, Richard Jordan Gatling, a 19th-century tinkerer and entrepreneur. A gifted amateur inventor, he registered his first patent—for a mechanical seed planter—in 1844 and had 43 lifetime patents. In 1862, with the Civil War raging, Gatling invented a six-barrel, rapid-firing (200 rounds per minute) gun based on his seed planter. Initially rejected by the Union army, the gun finally came into use in 1866 as a bully and enforcer against striking workers and in the Indian Wars; its legacy—the mechanization of death—didn’t become fully apparent until the killing fields of WWI. A celebrity in the 19th century, Gatling was soon reviled for his terrible marvel and then consigned to obscurity. Keller rescues Gatling and anchors his remarkable life firmly in the landscape of 19th-century America: a time and place of egalitarian hope and infinite possibility.
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In print for more than thirty years, this book has long served as a standard text on the Germanic penetration of the Roman Empire. Bury’s history is indispensable to anyone who seeks to understand the connection between the barbarian migrations of the third to the ninth century and the framework of modern Europe.
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AD 255 – the Roman Imperium is stretched to breaking point, its authority and might challenged throughout the territories and along every border. Yet the most lethal threat lurks far to the east in Persia, where the massing forces of the Sassanid Empire loom with fiery menace. The far-flung and isolated citadel of Arete faces out across the wasteland, awaiting the inevitable invasion. One man is sent to marshall the defences of this lonely city – one man to shore up the crumbling walls of a once indomitable symbol of Roman power – a man whose name itself means war, a man called Ballista. Alone, Ballista is called to muster the forces and the courage to stand first and to stand hard against the greatest enemy ever to confront the Imperium. In the bestselling tradition of Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden, comes a block-busting voice in historical adventure fiction.
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he author’s research into Mycenaean culture, coupled with Trojan War mythology’s larger-than-life heroes, enliven a bold story pulsing with romance and sacrifice, omens and battles. Helen’s noble Spartan parents try to defy the fates when a seer foretells the tragedy Helen and her legendary beauty will cause, but, as the myth of Helen demonstrates, destiny cannot be altered. Helen’s years of seclusion in Sparta lead to a frigid marriage to Menelaus before she connects with Paris, the Trojan prince with whom she forges an inextricable bond. Barely into her 20s, Helen escapes with Paris to Troy, but finds the Trojan royals welcome her with less than open arms. The mythic war, which, in less capable hands, might be over-romanticized, is portrayed with an enthusiasm that rings true to the period without verging on stagy—no small feat when dealing with such a sweeping conflict. George’s extraordinary storytelling abilities shine in her portrayal of Helen as both a conflicted woman who abandoned her homeland and child for true love, and as a legendary figure whose beauty and personal choices had epic consequences.
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It was the most intense and critical struggle of World War II, the outcome of which would mean freedom or Nazi domination of Europe. Fought by a handful of young men, some as young as 18, it was the Battle of Britain, and in this lively and stirring history, acclaimed author Michael Korda, who served in the RAF himself, tells the complete story, witnessed through the tales of pilots, ground crews, and commanders on both sides. Korda sets the battle against the political happenings of 1930s Europe and introduces the visionary engineers and scientists in Germany and Britain whose aircraft and stunning innovations-like radar-would be used with dramatic results. He also explores the political struggle behind the battle. As the British Army evacuated from Dunkirk and France fell to the Germans, Korda shows how Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding fought to prevent Prime Minister Winston Churchill from sending additional fighters to France, where Dowding knew they would be lost – perhaps the single most critical moment in British political history and the pivotal moment of the war. ‘Korda’s natural talent and experience as a storyteller has enabled him to bind all the disparate and sometimes conflicting episodes into a gripping story. A formidable job, beautifully completed.’ Len Deighton author of Fighter and Bomber. Michael is the former editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster.
Read by John Lee
9 hours 25 mins
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When the first version of this book was published in 1982 under the title, The Spanish Civil War, Gerald Brenan described it as ‘by a long way the best, and fairest and the most accurate book upon it’. Over the intervening years, a huge amount of new material has appeared in Spain and from documents finally emerging from Russian, German and other archives. Antony Beevor’s Spanish publisher persuaded him that the time was right, with the approach of the war’s seventieth anniversary, to rewrite the book, taking advantage of the new information and reinforcing it with new research. The Spanish edition, published in September, 2005, ran to over 900 pages, and received a [adjective to be chosen later depending on the outcome!!] reception in Spain as the first major history of the subject for the 21st Century. This version, incorporating still more detail from foreign archives, is necessarily condensed for British and overseas markets. The Spanish Civil War, even after all these years, remains one of the most passionately debated conflicts of modern times. Many see it as the opening round of the Second World War and almost a world war by proxy, with Nazi, Fasist and Soviet intervention. Some supporters of the Republic still believe that a victory of the left in Spain would have defeated fascism and saved Europe from the horrors to come. Nationalists, on the other hand, argue that the civil war was in fact the opening round of the Cold War between western civilisation and Soviet dictatorship. This book charts not only the course of the war in a fresh light, but illuminates the vicious infighting on both sides. The hopes and fears of a whole generation foundered in disillusionment and despair at the cruel war which destroyed the Spanish Republic. From reviews of the original work ‘It is a rare book which cannot be supplemented, and Antony Beevor writes with insight, skill and an admirably pithy style both in narrative and characterisation.’ John Keegan in The Sunday Times. ‘Bold, clean driving narrative.’ The Times Literary Supplement. ‘Lucid, expert and even-handed.’ The Economist. Antony Beevor served as a regular officer in the 11th Hussars in Germany. STALINGRAD and BERLIN: THE DOWNFALL have been translated into 25 languages and won a plethora of the major prizes. His latest work, A WRITER AT WAR – VASILY GROSSMAN WITH THE RED ARMY 1941-1945, is an edition, with his Russian researcher, Dr Luba Vinogradova, of Grossman’s wartime notebooks. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France, Beevor has been chairman of Society of Authors; he is a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper.
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