On 6 June 1944 when the allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years.

Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit summer England to face within hours a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire. They witnessed scenes, above all of sudden death, such as no exercise had prepared them for.
In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade, Montgomery''s 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single British beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the apparently interminable years training and preparing in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond. Here are the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery, the battles on the shoreline and against the German strongpoints inland, narrated and explained with all the insights that Hastings'' decades of study, veterans'' interviews and new archive research enable him to deploy. The book offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June, as Montgomery had promised Churchill that they would - and the story of the brigadier who was sacked for that failure. There is also a host of personal portraits of key figures from commando leader Lord Lovat, famously brave but supremely arrogant, to tank colonel Jim Eadie, whose tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry repulsed a panzer division in the last hours of 6 June, and some of the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened.
This is D-Day as you have never read the story told before, with the blend of narrative, analysis and human insight that made Max Hastings'' last book Operation Biting, like many of his earlier works, a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller. Lire la suite Fermer

- #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR, WRITING ON THE AREA HE KNOWS AND HANDLES BEST: THE THICKEST ACTION AND BIGGEST HUMAN STORIES OF WW2, WITH A BRITISH SKEW - THIS IS A STORY NEVER BEFORE COVERED BY COMMERCIAL HISTORY - RETURNING TO THE SUCCESS OF HIS MOST RECENT WW2 NARRATIVES: CHASTISE (50K HBs, 40K PBs) AND OPERATION PEDESTAL (41K HBs, 31K PBs) - HUGE SALES RECORD:
All Hell Let Loose - 142k HB, 150k PB Catastrophe - 111k HB, 105k PB Vietnam - 102k HB, 87k PB The Secret War - 84k HB, 84k PB Competition: SAS;Break Point;The Crew;Barbarossa;The Western Front;Enemy at the Gates;Grey Goose of Arnhem;Normandy 44;First Light;The Volunteer;The Second World War;Anglo-Saxons. Antony Beevor;James Holland;Saul David;John Nichol;Ben Macintyre;Ian Kershaw;Laurence Rees;David Price;Jonathan Dimbleby;Marc Morris Lire la suite Fermer

An extraordinary new account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how it created some of the most dangerous, unstable years in world history - from the number one bestselling historian Max Hastings.

In the style of his bestselling history Vietnam , this book sees veteran war reporter and historian Max Hastings take on the Cuban Missile Crisis. In these gripping, authoritative pages, Hastings tells the story of a war that seemed like a stalemate, and a threat that could have meant apocalypse. Threaded together are close-up character portraits and big picture analysis, military collisions and accounts of the social, political forces that dictated decisions.
This is a new history for a new generation, putting fresh, international context on an astonishing military and political showdown. In those throes of the Cold War, hundreds of millions of people around the world were, for some days, terrified that a nuclear holocaust was imminent. Bringing together the threads of American bellicosity and Soviet brinksmanship, it becomes clear that while both sides eventually stepped away from destruction, that does not mean disaster was not terrifyingly close.
Casting new light on an epic clash of wills, this is the story of when the abyss beckoned.
Lire la suite Fermer

The Battle for the Falklands is a thoughtful and informed analysis of an astonishing chapter in modern British history from journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings and political editor Simon Jenkins. Ten weeks. 28,000 soldiers. 8,000 miles from home. The Falklands War in 1982 was one of the strangest in British history. At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity - thousands of men sent overseas for a tiny relic of empire - but the British victory over the Argentinians not only confirmed the quality of British arms but also boosted the political fortunes of Thatcher''s Conservative government. However, it left a chequered aftermath and was later overshadowed by the two Gulf wars. Max Hastings'' and Simon Jenkins'' account of the conflict is a modern classic of war reportage and the definitive book on the conflict. Lire la suite Fermer

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A masterly history of the Dambusters raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings. Operation Chastise, the overnight destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAF''s 617 Squadron, was an epic that has passed into Britain''s national legend. Max Hastings grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who won the VC leading the raid. In the 21st Century, however, Hastings urges that we should review the Dambusters in much more complex shades. The aircrew''s heroism was wholly authentic, as was the brilliance of Barnes Wallis, who invented the ''bouncing bombs''. But commanders who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war fantasised wildly. What Germans call the Mohnekatastrophe imposed on the Nazi war machine temporary disruption, rather than a crippling blow. Hastings vividly describes the evolution of Wallis'' bomb, and of the squadron which broke the dams at the cost of devastating losses. But he also portrays in harrowing detail those swept away by the torrents. Some 1,400 civilians perished in the biblical floods that swept through the Mohne valley, more than half of them Russian and Polish women, slave labourers under Hitler. Ironically, Air Marshal Sir Arthur ''Bomber'' Harris gained much of the credit, though he opposed Chastise as a distraction from his city-burning blitz. He also made what the author describes as the operation''s biggest mistake - the failure to launch a conventional attack on the Nazis'' huge post-raid repair operation, which could have transformed the impact of the dam breaches upon Ruhr industry. Chastise offers a fascinating retake on legend by a master of the art. Hastings sets the dams raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.
Lire la suite Fermer

An epic, intimate new account of one of the greatest naval dramas of World War II, from number one bestselling historian Max Hastings. Operation Pedestal was a crucial relief mission that became an epic, bloody naval battle and a pivotal moment in the Second World War. In 1942, the Luftwaffe had a stranglehold on Malta. In the months of April and May, they dropped more bombs on the island than on London in the entire Blitz. British attempts to bring in supplies and reinforcements were failing with heavy losses, and the people on Malta were closing in on starvation as the Axis attempted to force their surrender. Operation Pedestal saw an armada of fifty British ships, painstakingly loaded with food and medical supplies, ammunition and fuel, attempt to fight its way in convoy to the island. The ensuing battle was brutal on both sides, Italian submarines and German planes dealing serious damage alongside the naval skirmishing. Over the course of a few fierce days, Britain scraped a victory and ensured Malta''s survival - though at the loss of a horrifying number of ships and lives. It was an emblematic moment when, in the cruel accountancy of war, the price was worth paying. In his signature brilliant style, Max Hastings gives a thrilling narrative of this little-known but crucial naval battle, retelling the intense action which perfectly encapsulates the spirit and power of the Royal Navy, surely the fiercest and most iconic fighting force of WW2.
Lire la suite Fermer

''A fascinating collection of military stories ... The sort of book that can be picked up at intervals ... [but] once tasted, is hard to put down'' Washington Post From bestselling author Max Hastings, a collection of the most extraordinary stories of war, courage, tragedy, strategy and survival.

Men at War is a collection of the very best stories about soldiers, brought together by the award-winning, bestselling historian Max Hastings. In his almost sixty years of military study and his work in the midst of modern conflicts as a foreign correspondent, these are the stories that left a mark.
In these pages you will find heroes and cowards; triumphs, tragedies and comedies. It illustrates, mostly through people''s own words, what it''s been like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to today''s Iraq and Afghanistan.
The characters include the Black Prince and Cromwell, Wellington at Waterloo, Siegfried Sassoon at the Somme, George Orwell in the Spanish Civil War and Evelyn Waugh as a commando. But there are also Americans, Frenchmen, Israelis, Russians, not to mention the women warriors of Dahomey, Queen Boudicca and the women who serve today in the US Marines.There are more than 300 stories in all,and an astounding variety of soldiers'' experiences through the ages.Many have been responsible for wonderful achievements but a few, also, for dreadful crimes.Some relate horrors, while others tell terrific jokes.
This is a book that might make you feel as grateful that whatever the troubles of our own times, we are spared the mud and blood and anguish, if also the moments of glory, that the soldiers in these pages bring so vividly to life.
Lire la suite Fermer

Paris et ses curiosités ; ou nouveau guide du voyageur à Paris . Contenant l'indication de tout ce qui concerne le gouvernement.-Objets relatifs au commerce.-Bibliothèques.-Monumens des sciences et arts.-Théâtres.-Jardins publics, etc, etc. ; augmenté d'une description des châteaux et maisons de plaisance des environs de Paris ; suivi d'une liste nominative des fonctionnaires publics, des banquiers, agens de change, etc.
Date de l'édition originale : 1802 Appartient à l'ensemble documentaire : IledeFr1 Ce livre est la reproduction fidèle d'une oeuvre publiée avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres réimprimés à la demande éditée par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliothèque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunité d'accéder à des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.
Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette collection ont été numérisées par la BnF et sont présentes sur Gallica, sa bibliothèque numérique.

En entreprenant de redonner vie à ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres réimprimés à la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilité de rencontrer un public élargi et participons à la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.
Nous avons cherché à concilier la reproduction fidèle d'un livre ancien à partir de sa version numérisée avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous espérons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entière satisfaction.

Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.fr Lire la suite Fermer

8 juin 1944... La division "Das Reich", forte de quinze mille hommes, deux cent neuf chars et pièces d'artillerie, s'ébranle à Montauban en direction de la Normandie.
Entravée dans sa progression par la Résistance, par des opérations de commando et les bombardements de l'aviation alliée, elle va sur son trajet acquérir bientôt une terrible notoriété, en se livrant à Tulle et à Oradour-sur-Glane à deux ignominieuses actions de représailles dont le souvenir tragique ne s'est jamais effacé de la mémoire des Français.
Ces odieuses exactions perpétrées lors d'une phase critique des hostilités, allaient cependant avoir indirectement d'importantes conséquences au niveau stratégique. En effet, si la division "Das Reich" était arrivée à temps sur les lieux du débarquement, elle aurait, selon toute vraisemblance, sinon permis aux forces allemandes de rejeter les alliés à la mer, du moins contribué à différer l'issue de la bataille, retardant du même coup la libération rapide de la France.
Quel rôle la Résistance joua-t-elle dans le déroulement de ces événements ? Dans quelle mesure sa participation héroïque freina-t-elle la marche de la division ? Dans quel contexte s'inscrivirent les lâches assassinats et le martyre de populations innocentes ?
Se défendant de vouloir ranimer de manière stérile d'inutiles controverses ou de minimiser des responsabilités parfois bien difficiles à évaluer, Max Hastings répond à ces questions ; d'un oeil objectif et impartial, avec le recul nécessaire de près de quarante années. Désirant avant tout comprendre les véritables motivations des protagonistes du drame, il a pendant de longs mois traqué la vérité en fouillant toutes les archives des pays concernés. Il a surtout interrogé des témoins et les survivants tant du côté français que du côté allemand ou allié.
Au lecteur d'aujourd'hui d'apprécier la valeur de leur témoignage et de découvrir, à la faveur d'un éclairage nouveau, l'une des pages les plus douloureuses et les plus extraordinaires de la guerre secrète, dont certains épisodes n'avaient encore jamais été racontés.
Lire la suite Fermer