Alone Britain Churchill And Dunkirk Defeat Into Victory

Author : Michael Korda
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631491334
Total Pages : 564 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory written by Michael Korda and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most miraculous military rescue missions in modern history comes alive in this “superb and panoramic” (Washington Post) account of Dunkirk. No one can evince the drama of what actually happened at Dunkirk in the year 1940 with as “great narrative skill and superb delineation” (David McCullough) as Michael Korda, the historian and legendary book editor. As dramatized in Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk, May 1940 was a month like no other: Germany’s war machine blazed into France, the impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast canvas, best-selling author Michael Korda relates his own personal story, “by turns charming, powerful and poignant” (Minneapolis Star Tribune): that of a six-year-old boy from a glamorous movie family who would himself be evacuated. Weaving together “eyewitness detail and a fine sense of drama” (Boston Globe) to form an epic of remarkable originality, Alone movingly captures a moment of historic triumph—when an unlikely flotilla of destroyers brought 300,000 men home to safety.

Author : Michael Korda
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 1631491326
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alone written by Michael Korda and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War Two and the great events that led to Dunkirk. An epic of remarkable originality, Alone captures the heroism of World War II as movingly as any book in recent memory. Bringing to vivid life the world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the war, Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Clouds of Glory, chronicles the outbreak of hostilities, recalling as a prescient young boy the enveloping tension that defined pre-Blitz London, and then as a military historian the great events that would alter the course of the twentieth century. For indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other. The superior German war machine blazed into France, as the Maginot Line, supposedly "as firmly fixed in place as the Pyramids," crumbled in days. With the fall of Holland and Belgium, the imminent fall of Paris, the British Army stranded at Dunkirk, and Neville Chamberlain’s government in political freefall, Winston Churchill became prime minister on this historical nadir of May 10, 1941. Britain, diplomatically isolated, was suddenly the only nation with the courage and the resolve to defy Hitler. Against this vast historical canvas, Korda relates what happened and why. We first meet him at the age of six, surrounded by his glamorous movie family: his stage actress mother; his elegant father, Vincent, soon to receive an Academy Award; and his devoted Nanny Low, with whom he cites his evening prayers. Even the cheery BBC bulletins that Michael listened to every night could not mask the impending catastrophe, the German invasion so certain that the young boy, carrying his passport on a string around his neck, was evacuated to Canada on an ocean liner full of children. Such alarm was hardly exaggerated. No one, after all, could have ever imagined that the most unlikely flotilla of destroyers—Dutch barges, fishing boats, yachts, and even rowboats— would rescue over 300,000 men off the beach at Dunkirk and home to England. The miraculous return of the army was greeted with a renewed call for courage, and in the months that followed, the lives of tens of millions would be inexorably transformed, often tragically so, by these epochal weeks of May 1940. It is this pivotal turning point in world history that Korda captures with such immediacy in Alone, a work that triumphantly demonstrates that even the most calamitous defeats can become the most legendary victories.

Author : Walter Lord
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1453238506
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Miracle of Dunkirk written by Walter Lord and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the World War II evacuation portrayed in the Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Day of Infamy. In May 1940, the remnants of the French and British armies, broken by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, retreated to Dunkirk. Hemmed in by overwhelming Nazi strength, the 338,000 men gathered on the beach were all that stood between Hitler and Western Europe. Crush them, and the path to Paris and London was clear. Unable to retreat any farther, the Allied soldiers set up defense positions and prayed for deliverance. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an evacuation on May 26, expecting to save no more than a handful of his men. But Britain would not let its soldiers down. Hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and commercial vessels streamed into the Channel to back up the Royal Navy, and in a week nearly the entire army was ferried safely back to England. Based on interviews with hundreds of survivors and told by “a master narrator,” The Miracle of Dunkirk is a striking history of a week when the outcome of World War II hung in the balance (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.).

Author : Michael Korda
Publisher : Aurum
ISBN 13 : 1845138376
Total Pages : 784 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hero written by Michael Korda and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Korda’s Hero is an epic biography of the mysterious,Englishman whose daring exploits made him an object of intense fascination, known the world over as ‘Lawrence of Arabia. An Oxford Scholar and archaeologist, T.E. Lawrence was sent to Cairo as an intelligence officer in 1916 and vanished into the desert in 1917. He united and led the Arab tribes to defeat the Turks and eventually capture Damascus, an adventure he recorded in the classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A born leader, utterly fearless and seemingly impervious to pain and danger, he remained modest, and retiring. Farsighted diplomat, brilliant military strategist, the first media celebrity, and acclaimed writer, Lawrence was a visionary whose achievements transcended his time: had his vision for the modern Middle East been carried through, the hatred and bloodshed that have since plagued the region might have prevented. The democratic reforms he would have implemented as British High Commissioner of Egypt, are those the Egyptians are now demanding, 91 years later. Ultimately, as this magisterial work demonstrates, Lawrence remains the paradigm of the hero in modern times.

Author : Michael Korda
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062116312
Total Pages : 998 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Clouds of Glory written by Michael Korda and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 998 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller "Lively, approachable, and captivating. Like Lee himself, everything about Clouds of Glory is on a grand scale." —Boston Globe Michael Korda, the acclaimed biographer of Ulysses S. Grant and the bestsellers Ike and Hero, offers a brilliant, balanced, single-volume biography of Robert E. Lee, the first major study in a generation Korda paints a vivid and admiring portrait of Lee as a general and a devoted family man who, though he disliked slavery and was not in favor of secession, turned down command of the Union army in 1861 because he could not "draw his sword" against his own children, his neighbors, and his beloved Virginia. He was surely America's preeminent military leader, as calm, dignified, and commanding a presence in defeat as he was in victory. Lee's reputation has only grown in the 150 years since the Civil War, and Korda covers in groundbreaking detail all of Lee's battles and traces the making of a great man's undeniable reputation on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, positioning him finally as the symbolic martyr-hero of the Southern Cause. Clouds of Glory features dozens of stunning illustrations, some never before seen, including eight pages of color images, sixteen pages of black-and-white images, and nearly fifty battle maps.

Author : Lynne Olson
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780374531331
Total Pages : 460 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Troublesome Young Men written by Lynne Olson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how, in 1940, a group of rebellious Tory members of Parliament defied the appeasement policies of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to force his resignation and bring to power Winston Churchill.

Author : Robin Prior
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030018400X
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Britain Saved the West written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler’s Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain’s defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time—war diaries, combat reports, Home Security’s daily files, and much more—to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises. The book reassesses key events of 1940—crises that were recognized as such at the time and others not fully appreciated. Prior examines Neville Chamberlain’s government, Churchill’s opponents, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. He looks critically at the position of the United States before Pearl Harbor, and at Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. Prior concludes that the nation was saved through a combination of political leadership, British Expeditionary Force determination and skill, Royal Air Force and Navy efforts to return soldiers to the homeland, and the determination of the people to fight on “in spite of all terror.” As eloquent as it is controversial, this book exposes the full import of events in 1940, when Britain fought alone and Western civilization hung in the balance.

Author : Michael Korda
Publisher : The Countryman Press
ISBN 13 : 1682681580
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Catnip: A Love Story written by Michael Korda and published by The Countryman Press. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From silly to sweet, 365 cat sketches by Michael Korda, drawn with love for his wife With the imagination of a writer and the eye of an artist, Michael Korda doodled on the backs of old manuscripts in his tackroom while his wife, Margaret, was out riding. They loved and acquired cats—a habit written about previously in their book, Cat People—and the few in residence at this time would serve as inspiration for the drawings. These are no ordinary cat illustrations, though. Korda’s cats read newspapers and books; go ice skating in the small country town where they live; comfort Margaret’s horse, Monty, after a stressful vet visit; sell fried mice at the Farmer’s Market, and undertake (on paper, at least) whatever fanciful endeavors their keeper conjures up. The result is a collection of magical pieces, filled with joy, that represent a year in the life of a couple in love with one another, and certainly with their cats.

Author : Allen Packwood
Publisher : Grub Street Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1473893917
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Churchill Waged War written by Allen Packwood and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.

Author : John Clarke
Publisher : Policy Press
ISBN 13 : 1529227704
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Battle for Britain written by John Clarke and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-05-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe. Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture. Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.