On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union, and in days his troops were within reach of Moscow. The attack was stunning, but Stalin's response was even more astonishing. During the invasion, the mighty Soviet military stood in place while its soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands.
Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and diaries of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, the Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader. Refusing to believe that the Germans would strike first, despite repeated warnings, he continued to supply them with war materials in the days before the attack, then tied his generals' hands in the crucial first hours of the invasion. For more than a week, while Hitler rolled over Soviet territory, Stalin cowered in his dacha, leaving the country rudderless and -- as Pleshakov reveals here -- nearly losing power. The Red Army's effort to regain the territory lost in those first ten days cost more than 10 million Soviet lives.
Stalin's Folly is a dramatic hour-by-hour account that sheds light on an enigmatic and ruthless figure while providing a new and far deeper understanding of Russian history.

“Europe is a molehill….” Everything here is worn out…tiny Europe has not enough to offer. We must set off for the Orient; that is where all the greatest glory is to be achieved.”—Napoleon Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt was the first Western attack in modern times on a Middle Eastern country. In this remarkably rich and eminently readable historical account, acclaimed author Paul Strathern reconstructs a mission of conquest inspired by glory, executed in haste, and bound for disaster. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, mounted the most audacious military campaign of his already spectacular career. With 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection of scholars, artists, scientists, and inventors, he set sail for Egypt to establish an Eastern empire in emulation of Alexander the Great. Like everything Napoleon ever attempted, it was a plan marked by unquenchable ambition, heroic romanticism, and not a little madness. Napoleon saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians from the oppression of their Mameluke overlords. But while Napoleon thought his army would be welcomed as heroes, he tragically misunderstood Muslim culture and grossly overestimated the “gratitude” he could expect from those he’d come to save. Instead Napoleon and his men would face a grim war of attrition against an ad hoc army of Muslims led by the feared Murad Bey. Marching across seemingly endless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, suffering extremes of heat and thirst, and pushed to the limits of human endurance, they would be plagued by mirages, suicides, and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor and intended for glory would degenerate toward chaos and atrocity. But Napoleon’s grand failure in Egypt also yielded vast treasures of knowledge about a culture largely lost to the West, and through the recovery of artifacts like the Rosetta Stone, it prepared the way for the translation of hieroglyphics and modern Egyptology. And it tempered the complex leader who believed it his destiny to conquer the world. A story of war, adventure, politics, and a clash of cultures, Paul Strathern’sNapoleon in Egyptis history at once relevant and impossible to put down. From the Hardcover edition.

The only book to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the EU. Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors - including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave - Tim Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, and offers a gripping, day-by-day account of what really happened behind-the-scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe. Shipman gives his readers a ringside seat on how decisions were made, mistakes justified and betrayals perpetrated. Filled with stories, anecdotes and juicy leaks the book does not seek to address the rights and wrongs of Brexit but to explore how and why David Cameron chose to take the biggest political gamble of his life and explain why he lost. This is a story of calculation, attempted coups, individuals torn between principles and loyalty. All the events are here - from David Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum, through to the campaign itself, his resignation as prime minister, the betrayals and rivalries that occurred during the race to find his successor to the arrival of Theresa May in Downing Street as Britain's second female prime minister. All Out War is a book about leaders and their closest aides, the decisions they make and how and why they make them, as well as how they feel when they turn out to be wrong. It is about men who make decisions that are intellectually consistent and - by their own measure - morally sound that are simultaneously disastrous for themselves and those closest to them. It is about how doing what you know has worked before doesn't always work again. Most of all it is about asking the question: how far are you prepared to go to win?

A former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and an eminent economist tackle the biggest social issue of our time.

Of all the issues swirling around the 2008 election, the staggering projected costs for the upkeep of America's largest entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—loom with gathering intensity. Government revenues alone cannot solve the problem, but a solution must be found. In this book George P. Shultz and John B. Shoven take a practical—and optimistic—look at the issues at hand, offering an agenda for reform that will make these essential programs solvent. Drawing on a trove of original research, they take stock of the current situation, consider plans on offer from major thinkers in the field, and chart a course toward a system that provides income for the elderly and universal access to health care in ways that are fiscally sound. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to make an informed decision about the country's future.

An hour-by-hour account of Flight 007 which was shot down by a Russian interceptor killing all 269 passengers and crew on board the Korean jet.

Dwepen met linkse dictators en de vredesbeweging met al hun goede bedoelingen, waren die niet net zo fout als Joseph Luns? 

Journalistieke analyse van de opkomst en ondergang van Pim Fortuyn en zijn partij LPF.

Verslag van de speurtocht van de auteur naar zijn familie.

Oor- en ooggetuigen van de holocaust

Boek of brandstapel is geen vrolijk, maar wel een rijk boek. Oorlogen, opstanden en veroveringen met geweld waren er genoeg. Levendige verhalen worden aangevuld met boeiende informatieve teksten. De gravures en vooral de kleurige illustraties, vaak paginagroot, geven de historische figuren een gezicht. Een verademing voor jongeren vanaf 12 jaar die op een verfrissende manier kennis willen maken met de geschiedenis. Ook scholen kunnen er natuurlijk hun voordeel mee doen. Achterin o.a. een kaart van Europa in 1648. Best een belangrijk boek. 

Op 27 januari 2020 is het precies vijfenzeventig jaar geleden dat het concentratiekamp Auschwitz bevrijd werd. Veel ooggetuigen, mensen die het kamp hebben overleefd, zijn inmiddels overleden. Speciaal voor deze nagedachtenis verzamelde Arnon Grunberg teksten die getuigen van het vernietigingskamp en de ontmenselijking, van Primo Levi s vlak na de bevrijding geschreven 'Is dit een mens' en het onbekendere, aangrijpende werk van Tadeusz Borowski tot aan het in 2015 gepubliceerde dagboek 'Zolang er nog tranen zijn' van Hannelore Grünberg-Klein, zijn moeder, Auschwitz-overlevende. In zijn essay dat aan de bloemlezing voorafgaat betoogt Grunberg dat de poging van de nazi s een heel volk te vernietigen erfgoed is dat onze cultuur en ons mensbeeld drastisch heeft gewijzigd. De getuigenissen stellen de vraag wat literatuur vermag op scherp en gaan altijd ook over onze wereld en onze demonen.

Studie over de Duitse razzia op het Veluwse dorp Putten in de herfst van 1944 en over de nationale herinnering daaraan sinds het einde van de oorlog.

Nu standbeelden sneuvelen en ons koloniale verleden opnieuw tegen het licht wordt gehouden, is het hoog tijd om een bezem door de koloniale letteren te halen. Want wat moeten en mogen we nog lezen uit die besmette canon? Wie is het lezen nog waard, wie moeten we van de canonieke sokkel trekken? 0Na 'De nieuwe feministische leeslijst' en 'Jongens waren we' werpt 'De Groene Amsterdammer' een frisse blik op de literatuur over ons koloniale heden en verleden. Met bijdragen van onder anderen Alfred Schaffer, Maaike Meijer. Alfred Birney, Marja Pruis, Warda El-Kaddouri, Manon Uphoff, Gloria Wekker, Joost de Vries en Theodor Holman.

In 'Rusland in oorlog deel 1 (september 2013 – juli 2014)' hebben we laten zien hoe president Vladimir Poetin binnen een jaar de gijzelaar werd van zijn eigen propagandamachine. De ambities van de president erkenning te zoeken voor de status van Rusland als wereldmacht heeft al vele duizenden doden geëist in wat hij noemt Novorossija, het nieuwe Rusland, en wat de wereld ziet als twee oostelijke provincies van de soevereine staat Oekraïne. De Russische burger leeft verder in een op hol geslagen staatsmachine die dagelijks een lawine van haat uitspuwt tegen het Westen. De Koude Oorlog Poetin-stijl heeft gevaarlijke warme trekjes gekregen kunnen we in dit deel 2 laten zien. Ondertussen wordt onderzocht wie het toestel van MH17 op 17 juli 2014 met 298 passagiers onder wie 196 Nederlanders met een Bukraket heeft neergehaald. Sterke vermoedens wijzen in de richting van de door Rusland gesteunde separatisten.

In September, 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome and ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler’s chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap (and, perhaps, kill) Pope Pius XII. At the same time plans were being made to deport Rome’s Jews to Auschwitz, Wolff began playing a dangerous game: stalling Hitler’s plot against the pope, whom he hoped would save him from the noose in case Germany lost the war. To save Pius, Wolff and fellow conspirators blackmailed him into silence when the Jews were rounded up, hoping that Hitler would rescind his order. This tale of intrigue and betrayal is one of the most important untold stories of World War II. Dan Kurzman was the first journalist to have interviewed General Wolff following his release from prison after the war. And this is the only book to tell the full behind-the-scenes story of the plot against the Vatican and its far-reaching consequences.

C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s. Woodward convincingly shows that, even under slavery, the two races had not been divided as they were under the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s. In fact, during Reconstruction, there was considerable economic and political mixing of the races. The segregating of the races was a relative newcomer to the region.

Hailed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century, The Strange Career of Jim Crow has sold almost a million copies and remains, in the words of David Herbert Donald, "a landmark in the history of American race relations."

Hoewel het meer dan 65 jaar geleden is dat er een einde kwam aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog, speelt die nog steeds een onuitwisbare rol in ons nationaal bewustzijn.
Met Dat nooit meer schreef Chris van der Heijden een cultuurgeschiedenis van Nederland met als centrale vraagstuk de verwerking van de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
In dit omvangrijke boek staan voor het eerst alle grote verhalen op een rij: het verhaal van het aanvankelijke optimisme, de teleurstelling van Wilhelmina, het gevecht van de kranten om papier en prestige, de grote naoorlogse affaires (Weinreb, Menten, Aantjes), de tweedeling tussen goed en 'fout', tot de rol van de Shoah en het verhaal van Anne Frank.
Met Grijs verleden was Van der Heijden al verantwoordelijk voor een van de belangrijkste veranderingen in het denken over de oorlog, dit boek is het logische en omvattende vervolg ervan.
'Grijs Verleden is zonder twijfel een van de belangrijkste boeken over Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog van de laatste jaren.' - HANS BLOM
'Van der Heijden weet ontzaglijk veel van de periode, en hij vertelt in Zwarte renaissance graag en meeslepend.' - JAN BLOKKER

Nederlandse premiejagersop zoek naar joden 

Essay over godsdienstvrijheid, waarin ervoor wordt gepleit om deze drastisch uit te breiden, zowel in Nederland als elders in de wereld.

Autobiografisch relaas van de enige overlevende van een transport vanuit Westerbork in 1943.

Tweehonderd jaar eerste kamer. De laatste 25 jaar in het vizier. (1990-2015)

Den kendte militæranalytikkers gennemgang af 1. verdenskrig

The new book from Larry Siedentop, acclaimed author of Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today 'Magisterial, timeless, beautifully written ... Siedentop has achieved something quite extraordinary. He has explained us to ourselves' Spectator This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think. The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy. There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are. LARRY SIEDENTOP was appointed to the first post in intellectual history ever established in Britain, at Sussex University in the 1970's. From there he moved to Oxford, becoming Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought and a Fellow of Keble College. His writings include a study of Tocqueville, an edition of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, and Democracy in Europe, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Siedentop was made CBE in 2004. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK 'One of the most stimulating books of political theory to have appeared in many years ... a refreshingly unorthodox account of the roots of modern liberalism in medieval Christian thinking' John Gray, Literary Review 'A brave, brilliant and beautifully written defence of the western tradition' Paul Lay, History Today 'An engrossing book of ideas ... illuminating, beautifully written and rigorously argued' Kenan Malik, Independent 'A most impressive work of philosophical history' Robert Skidelsky