Before the Bomb, there were simply 'bombs', lower case. But it was the twentieth century, one hundred years of almost incredible scientific progress, that saw the birth of the Bomb, the human race's most powerful and most destructive discovery.In this magisterial and enthralling account, Gerard DeGroot gives us the life story of the Bomb, from its birth in the turn-of-the-century physics labs of Europe to a childhood in the New Mexico desert of the 1940s, from adolescence and early...

World War One had a devastating, cataclysmic impact on the world and the British people. As its reverberations were so long-lasting and significant, it is easy to assume that the social consequences were as profound.In this highly readable and moving survey of life back at home during the First World War, Gerard DeGroot challenges this assumption, finding pre-war social structures were surprisingly resilient. Despite economic and technological changes, the British people managed to...

Before 1966, the idea of Reagan in politics provoked widespread scorn. To most people, he seemed a has-been actor, a right-wing extremist and a 'dunce'. Journalists therefore ridiculed his aspirations to be governor of California. No one, however, doubted his incredible ability to communicate with a crowd. In order to succeed in his campaign, Reagan had to be packaged as an outsider - an antidote to politics as usual. A highly sophisticated team of marketers and ad-men turned the scary rig...

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award****The definitive history of nuclear weapons—**from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb.This sweeping account begins in the 19th cen...

Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for The California Book Award in NonfictionThe San Francisco Chronicle's Best of the Year ListForeign Affairs Best Books of the YearIn These Times “Best Books of the Year"Huffington Post's Ten Excellent December Books ListLitHub's “Five Books Making News This Week”

Peter Clarke brilliantly challenges the commonly held view of Britain in the twentieth century as a nation in decline. Adopting a wide perspective, he examines the political. social and economic changes that transformed Britain. He looks at how jobs and prices, food and shelter, and education and welfare, shaped society and explores such areas as architecture, sport and popular culture. Embracing a century of national experience, Hope and Glory superbly conveys the diverse aspects of three...

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would ...

The mass evacuation of children and new and expectant mothers during the Second World War is well documented. But over fifty per cent of children were not evacuated during the War, and it is these young people who offer an unrivalled view of what life was like during the bombing raids in Britain's cities. In Blitz Families Penny Starns takes a new look at the children whose parents refused to bow to official pressure and kept their beloved children with them throu...

The Will of the People is an incisive, in-depth look at Winston Churchill’s lifelong commitment to parliamentary democracy. First elected at twenty-five, Churchill was still in the House of Commons sixty-four years later. By far the largest part of his life – of his working days and nights – was spent in the cut and thrust of debate in the service of the people, whose instrument he believed Parliament to be. “I am a child of the House of Commons,” he told a joint session o...

The incredible true story of a British physicist who was an undercover spy for the Soviets. The world first heard of Klaus Fuchs, the head of theoretical physics at the British Research Establishment at Harwell in February 1950 when he appeared at the Old Bailey, accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union. For over sixty years disinformation and lies surrounded the story of Klaus Fuchs as the Governments of Britain, the United States and Russia all tried to cover up th...

Mark Easton's Britain Etc.looks at the UK through its relationship to 26 subjects - one for each letter of the alphabet. From Alcohol, Beat Bobbies, Cheese and Dogs through Immigration, Justice, Knives and Murder to the Queen, Umbrellas, Vegetables and the Zzzz of a well-deserved rest, the book's meticulously researched but accessible essays map the back-story of contemporary Britain.With each lettered chapter, the reader is invited to look at the United Kingdom in a new way: stand...

Innovation, the sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd's magnificent History of England series, takes readers from the Boer War to the Millennium Dome almost a hundred years later.Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd's History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the twentieth century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne for almos...