Considerada una obra maestra que arroja luz sobre una de las guerras más confusas del siglo XX.De una forma brillante y con detalles conmovedores, Hugh Thomas analiza este devastador conflicto en el que las esperanzas, los sueños y las creencias de este siglo estallaron en el campo de batalla. La Guerra Civil refleja, como si de un microcosmos se tratara, las tensiones que llevaron a Europa a la Guerra Mundial: de la puesta en juego de las maquinaciones de Franco y...

Though more than half a century has passed since the Spaish Civil War began in 1936, it is still the subject of intense controversy. What was it that roused left wing sympathisers from all over the world to fight for a cause for which their governments would not give active support? In his famous history, Hugh Thomas presents an objective analysis of a conflict - where fascism and democracy, communism and Christianity, centralism and regionalism were all at stake - and which was a much an ...

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures. Between 1492 and about 1870, ten million or more black slaves were carried from Africa to one port or another of the Americas.In this wide-ranging book, Hugh Thomas follows the development of this massive shift of human lives across the centuries until the slave trade's abolition in the late nineteenth century.

Charles V, Emperor of Europe and the New World, is the central figure in the second volume of Hugh Thomas's great history of the Spanish Empire. It begins with the return of the remnants of Magellan's expedition around the world in 1522 and ends with Charles's death in 1558. In the decades between, the Spaniards conquer Guatemala, Yucatan, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru and Chile, and control the banks of the mighty River Plate; the audacious conquistador Francisco de Orellana journeys down the...

Una obra clásica que ofrece al lector una visión apasionante de la historia, la política y la cultura de la isla del Caribe y que, en esta nueva edición, revisa la historia reciente de Cuba en una esclarecedora introducción que plantea la tesis del cambio y la posibilidad de que nos encontremos ante una importante encrucijada de la historia de este país.La isla de Cuba fue, desde la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, un territorio clave para el control del tráfico marí...

First serious examination of the curious demise of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that also investigates an extraordinary web of secret deals and international intrigue.On 23 May 1945 Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and architect of the Holocaust, committed suicide in Allied custody. So why was MI6's most talented secret agent Kim Philby unconvinced by the story of Himmler's suicide?Hugh Thomas set out to answer Philby's question and has uncovered a maze of corruption,...

Peter joined the R.A.F. in 1938 on a short-service commission and was despatched to France when war broke out. After serving with legendary fighter ace Douglas Bader, Peter was posted to North Africa in 1942, where he was forced to crash-land his Hurricane in a minefield. He flew Spitfires on intruder sorties over France before and during D-Day, on bomber escort duty against V-weapons sites and in support of mass daylight raids deep into Germany. Awarded the D.F.C. in Dece...

From award-winning historian Hugh Thomas, Cuba: A History is the essential work for understanding one of the most fascinating and controversial countries in the world.Hugh Thomas's acclaimed book explores the whole sweep of Cuban history from the British capture of Havana in 1762 through the years of Spanish and United States domination, down to the twentieth century and the extraordinary revolution of Fidel Castro.Throughout this period of over tw...

From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes a magnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, when Spain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written a rich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder. At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French and expanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who were his agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a gangly and easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesm...

From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain’s early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas’s magisterial narrative of Spain in the New World has all the characteristics of great historical literature: amazing discoveries, ambition, greed, religious fanaticism, court intrigue, and a battle for the soul of humankind.Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. He...

Drawing on the patterns of words, speech, and identity we encounter in the wider world—subway ads in Mexico City, a Dutch-Japanese phrase book, multilingual airplane safety instructions, one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities—the poems in Hugh Thomas’s Maze playfully (mis)translate the maze of languages and language into moments of amazement.

The charm of Madrid is elusive, but for those who know how to find it, Madrid has magic. Its magic can be found in the shadow cast over the present by the past. In this Traveller's Reader, a city that was once the seat of power for perhaps the most ambitious political enterprise the western world had seen since the fall of Rome, the Spanish Empire, is brought to life in vivid diaries, letters, memoirs and histories.The Earl of Clarendon describes seventeenth-century bullfights; Sal...