±1±: Now is the time Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory [Audiobook][Unabridged] (Audio CD) Order Today!
±1±: Now is the time Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945 Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $17.95
Date Created : Aug 15, 2010 20:30:24
A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston’s War captures the full range of Churchill’s endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings’s Churchill comes brashly to life as never before.
Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime minister, and concluding with the end of the war, Hastings shows us Churchill at his most intrepid and essential, when, by sheer force of will, he kept Britain from collapsing in the face of what looked like certain defeat. Later, we see his significance ebb as the United States enters the war and the Soviets turn the tide on the Eastern Front. But Churchill, Hastings reminds us, knew as well as anyone that the war would be dominated by others, and he managed his relationships with the other Allied leaders strategically, so as to maintain Britain’s influence and limit Stalin’s gains.
At the same time, Churchill faced political peril at home, a situation for which he himself was largely to blame. Hastings shows how Churchill nearly squandered the miraculous escape of the British troops at Dunkirk and failed to address fundamental flaws in the British Army. His tactical inaptitude and departmental meddling won him few friends in the military, and by 1942, many were calling for him to cede operational control. Nevertheless, Churchill managed to exude a public confidence that brought the nation through the bitter war.
Hastings rejects the traditional Churchill hagiography while still managing to capture what he calls Churchill’s “appetite for the fray.” Certain to be a classic, Winston’s War is a riveting profile of one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century.
±1±: Best Buy A deeply engrossing, and most revealing, account of Churchill during Great Britain's toughest hours and years. Max Hastings has accomplished a brilliant task: painting a full portrait of a complex man, using all the colors of the human palette without favoring one over the other.
For lay Churchillian fossil hunters--eager to crack open that one rock which will reveal the perfectly defined imprint of a long-extinct species of leader, Winston's War is the ideal tool for discovery. In page after page, Hastings gives us Churchill the humanist, the warrior, the worrier, the optimist, the depressed, the badgerer and and the beguiler. But most of all, Hastings reveals as few have before, Churchill's devotion to the Great Britain that once was and, in his vision, could be again, if only his plans were properly attended to by generals and allies whose actions were otherwise limited to the near horizon of self-interest.
The same brush that defines Churchill with such clarity and vibrance does not neglect to flesh out other characters from that era -- Roosevelt and the American chiefs of staff, and Winston's own stable of generals and advisers receive equal amounts of critical paint, and not always in pleasing hues.
Hastings is not all laud and champagne for Churchill; Winston's War gives us a churlish Winnie, a frustrated warfighter, a spoiled child, an unthinking master, a fretful husband, and bitter father. Through Hasting's sharply focused lens of research and discovery, we watch Churchill fall victim to the duplicity of perceived friends--Beaverbrook, for one, with all his smarminess and deceit--and to seek the embrace of the spitting cobra of Stalin in order to save Poland from the fangs of Soviet domination. Just as in a horror movie in which a hapless character is about to turn a corner to face a bloodthirsty monster the audience can already see, Hastings' portrayal of the Churchill/Stalin matchup will have you screaming, "Run, Winston, run!" and yet you will be unable to stop turning the pages, just as history could not be stopped or re-directed.
But for all his foibles and failings--and there were many--the scales of judgment must, if Hastings has it right--and I believe he does--tip easily toward a near reverence for Churchill's place in history. He was not as much a man of his time, as he was the right man for his time. An anachronism from the very start of the war, Churchill nonetheless was able to poke, prod, cajole, inspire, and lead even when so many forces--social, political, and economic--were placed in his path. As Hastings puts it, "He was one of the greatest actors upon the stage of affairs whom the world has ever known ... He was the largest human being ever to occupy his office." on Sale!
±1±: Now is the time Spies of the Balkans: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $10.95
Date Created : Aug 02, 2010 06:34:10
Greece, 1940. Not sunny vacation Greece: northern Greece, Macedonian Greece, Balkan Greece—the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and warehouses, dark lanes and Turkish mansions, brothels and tavernas, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini’s invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania—the first defeat suffered by the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler cannot tolerate such freedom; the invasion is coming, it’s only a matter of time, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait.
At the center of this drama is Costa Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special “political” cases. As war approaches, the spies begin to circle, from the Turkish legation to the German secret service. There’s a British travel writer, a Bulgarian undertaker, and more. Costa Zannis must deal with them all. And he is soon in the game, securing an escape route—from Berlin to Salonika, and then to a tenuous safety in Turkey, a route protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters. And hunted by the Gestapo.
Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a local shipping magnate.
Declared “an incomparable expert at his game” by The New York Times, Alan Furst outdoes even his own finest novels in this thrilling new book. With extraordinary authenticity, a superb cast of characters, and heart-stopping tension as it moves from Salonika to Paris to Berlin and back, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to right—in many small ways—the world’s evil.
±1±: Best Buy Famed author Alan Furst revisits his legendary setting of a Europe overwhelmed by war in this latest account of high-stakes espionage and dangerous love affairs. SPIES OF THE BALKANS already floats near the top of the Indie National Bestseller List, following Furst's other superb World War II novels set in various locales.
The year is 1940 in the Balkan Peninsula, where Allied spies have infiltrated civic networks in many nations. German forces have devoured most of Western Europe now, with Axis powers controlling the majority of the Balkan States. Mussolini, having conquered Albania, now looks toward Greece to boost Italy's military might. Greek Nationals with access to sensitive information have begun to comprehend the full scale of Mussolini's intentions. A few Greeks and Germans with limited connections have also started a clandestine movement to help extricate Jews. These operatives are men and women who have come to understand the appalling truth behind the Nazis' intentions, who live in fear and risk everything to aid some terribly exposed people. Mr. Costa Zannis, a senior police officer in the port city of Salonika, Greece, is one of (initially) two undercover agents who choose to do this. He and a Jewish woman operating in Berlin will provide passage to safe countries for over 40 fugitives by the end, in a number of operations undertaken at the risk of many lives.
The daunting atmosphere that pervaded Europe during the War is infused into every aspect of this dark story, which centers on Costa Zannis and his experiences with operatives with whom he's involved. Zannis is a shrewd operator whose practical intelligence and courage make him an interesting hero and an ideal law enforcement officer. He is level-headed and ethical, traits that first led to his being entrusted. It is because of his dependability that Zannis chooses to do something decent at a time when nothing else decent seems to be happening. Zannis is forced to extend this same trust to other worthy parties who, through him, become accomplices in a risky venture. Though they all worry about being caught, none ever consider letting this stop them from doing what they must. And yet Zannis and the other operatives are flawed and fallible, people whose skills never set them far above the situations they're faced with. All in all, there are many characters here who keep the book in the realm of the believable and the moving.
Costa Zannis's story is at times as much about his personal passions as the secret operations in which he's involved. He cares deeply for his parents and his dog, and his private life can only be described as heated. His first affair is with a seductive British girlfriend who turns out to be a spy, which is followed by an even more passionate series of trysts with a lusty married woman with whom a relationship is extremely dangerous. Zannis's tendencies to wander easily into these kinds of dicey interludes --- and the subsequent descriptions of his heated seductions --- bring on some intense moments. There are several bold passages that center on the throes of his passion, and his lovers', which made me blush but certainly makes for writing that is sultry and amusing. This is compelling, sure, but it should be mentioned that Zannis is respectful and does care for the women he's with. He dreams of love even when his emotions tend toward the more tangible and immediate. In the end, his story is as much about finding peace and companionship as it is his subversive part in the War.
Before the end, Zannis and the other operatives sense that there is an unfortunate price to be paid for keeping one's honor. As the situation in Greece comes to a head with the German armies nearing Greece's borders, the Gestapo makes a vital discovery about Zannis's operation. The pursuit by the Germans of the operatives involved becomes imminent, and these events tie into factual accounts of the timeline in Greece. SPIES OF THE BALKANS takes readers forward to the historical occupation of Greece and the Reich's regrettable erection of the swastika over the Acropolis.
All in all, this is some intense history, which has been conveyed with remarkable sophistication --- moving fiction that fits perfectly into historical accounts. It is a stirring war story that readers will find to be both momentous and sad, but that ultimately is about men and women who choose to act with decency in a time of great suffering and brutality --- those champions who carry themselves with hope and integrity when all of the world seems to be lost.
