Of American and German parentage, Ernst Hanfstaengl graduated from Harvard and ran the family business in New York for a dozen years before returning to Germany in 1921. By chance he heard a then little-known Adolf Hitler speaking in a Munich beer hall and, mesmerized by his extraordinary oratorical power, was convinced the man would some day come to power. As Hitler’s fanatical theories and ideas hardened, however, he surrounded himself with rabid extremists such as Goering, Hess, and Goe...

This wide-ranging collection of New Hampshire lore will challenge, enlighten, and amuse ..,

June 6, 1944, is one of the most famous dates in world history, and, as David Howarth shows, a defining date in countless personal histories. In this intimate chronicle, the 7,000 vessels, 12,000 aircraft, and 750,000 men committed on D-Day are taken for granted. Instead, we see D-Day through the eyes of the men on the ground as Howarth weaves together the larger story of the beginning of the battle of Normandy with the stories of the beachhead itself. The scope of Howarth's vision-focusin...

The thrilling true story of the daring double agents who thwarted Hitler's spy machine in Britain and turned the tide of World War II.After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena—a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain.Quickly, a network of secr...

New York Times Bestseller: The true story of twelve Jews who went underground in Nazi Berlin—and survived: "Consummately suspenseful" ( Los Angeles Times).When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately one hundred sixty thousand Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than five thousand remained in the nation's capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to one thousand. All the othe...

From the author of Bismarck: " A work of simply outstanding scholarship . . . unreservedly recommended for . . . World War II Military History collections" ( Midwest Book Review).The successes of the German Blitzkrieg in 1939-41 were as surprising as they were swift. Allied decision-makers wanted to discover the Germans' secrets, even though only partial, incomplete information was available to ...

**How the Murder of More Than Two Million Jews Was Carried Out—In Broad DaylightBased on a decade of work by Father Patrick Desbois and his team at Yahad–In Unum that has culminated to date in interviews with more than 5,700 neighbors to the murdered Jews and visits to more than 2,700 extermination sites, many of them unmarked.One key finding: Genocide does not happen without the neighbors. The neighbors are instrumental to the crime.**In his National Jewish Book Aw...

“A mesmerizing, blood-chilling book . . . The contrast between innocent childhood experience, and the awful understanding of that experience that came with time, is enough to make you weep"– Los Angeles TimesGöring. Hess. Mengele. Dönitz. Names that conjure up dark memories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. They were the architects of the Third Reich. And they were fathers. Gerald Posner convinced eleven sons and daughters of Hitler’s inner circle to break...

The most remarkable double agent of World War II, Eddie Chapman was witty, handsome, and charming. Too bad he was also a con man, womanizer, and safe-cracker. To the British, though, he was known as ZigZag, one of MI5’s most valuable agents. To the Abwehr-German military intelligence-he was known as Fritzchen (Little Fritz), and was believed to be one of their most valued and trusted spies. For three long years, Eddie played this dangerous double game, daily risking life and limb to help t...

”[A] primer on the threat to democracy posed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the current president of the United States.”—David Litt, New York Times bestselling authorDonald Trump isn’t a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot’s Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including:Attacking the pressThreatening rule of law by firing tho...

"The best single volume available on the torturous life and savage reign of Adolf Hitler." — TimeA bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, Joachim Fest's Hitler has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era.Fest tells and interprets the extraordinary story of a man's and nation's rise from impotence to absolute power, as Germany and Hitler, from shared premises, e...

The story of the Scottish ruler—and the mysterious death of her ambitious and controversial husband.In the early hours of February 10, 1567, a large explosion ripped through the lodgings at Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, where Mary Queen of Scotland's consort, Henry, Lord Darnley, was staying. Darnley's body was found with that of his valet in a neighboring garden the next morning.The queen's husband had been murdered—and the ramifications for Mary and Scottish ...