Simone Veil, the former French lawyer and politician who became the first President of the European Union, was born Simone Jacob in 1927. In A Life, she describes in vivid detail a childhood of happiness and innocence spent in Nice that came to an abrupt end in 1944 when, at the age of 17, she was deported with her family to concentration camps. Though she survived, her mother, father, and brother all died in captivity. After the liberation of Auschwitz and upon her return to Fran...

The Veiled Sun: From Auschwitz to New Beginnings by Paul Schaffer and Translated from the French by Vivian Felsen with a Foreword by Serge Klarsfeld and an Introduction by Simone Veil.The Veiled Sun is a Holocaust memoir written in a highly literate style. Paul Schaffer spent his teenage years on the run from the Nazis in Austria, Belgium and France, and then in Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945. He survived to become a successful industrialist who was honoured by the g...

READ JOHN KAMPFNER'S NEW BOOK: IN SEARCH OF BERLIN: THE STORY OF A REINVENTED CITY***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***BOOK OF THE YEAR IN GUARDIAN, ECONOMIST & NEW STATESMAN'Excellent and provocative... a passionate, timely book.' Sunday Times'A fine new book... thoughtful, deeply reported and impeccably even-handed.' The TimesEmerging from a co...

The definitive history of Europe’s rebirth.From the ruins of war to the rise of the European Union, Postwar tells the sweeping story of Europe’s transformation in the 20th century. Historian Tony Judt draws on a lifetime of scholarship to chart how nations reckoned with totalitarianism, and forged a new vision of democracy and cooperation.Combining intellectual depth with narrative power, Judt’s masterpiece offers profound lessons about memory, ide...

**Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize 2024****A Financial Times Best Book of 2023**'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of FreeDrawing from the people who lived it, Homelands explores how Europe slowly recovered and rebuilt from World War Two. And then faltered.Timothy Garton Ash, our greatest writer about Europe, has spent a lifetime studying Europe and t...

Aesthete, sensualist, bookworm, politician of Machiavellian cunning: François Mitterrand was a man of exceptional gifts and exceptional flaws who, during his fourteen years as President, strove to drag his tradition-bound and change-averse country into the modern world.As a statesman and as a human being, he was the incarnation of the mercurial, contrarian France which Britain and America find so perennially frustrating. He embodied the ambiguities and the contradictions of a natio...

This Very Short Introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events and developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1936. It examines the impact of the revolution on society as a whole--on different classes, ethnic groups, the army, men and women, youth. Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another. The book registers the primacy of politics, but situates political developments firmly in the context of massive economic, social...

As financial turmoil in Europe preoccupies political leaders and global markets, it becomes more important than ever to understand the forces that underpin the European Union, hold it together and drive it forward. This timely book provides a gripping account of the realities of power politics among European states and between their leaders. Drawing on long experience working behind the scenes, Luuk van Middelaar captures the dynamics and tensions shaping the European Union from its ori...

The twentieth century in Europe witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in history. Yet it also saw incontestable improvements in the conditions of existence for most inhabitants of the continent - from rising living standards and dramatically increased life expectancy, to the virtual elimination of illiteracy, and the advance of women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals to greater equality of respect and opportunity. It was a century of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tende...

The idea of world leaders gathering in the midst of economic crisis has become all-too familiar. But the summit at Bretton Woods in 1944 was the only time countries from around the world have agreed to overhaul the structure of the international monetary system. And, what's more, they were successful - it was the closest to perfection the world's economy has ever been, and arguably the demise of the Bretton Woods system is behind our present woes.This was no dry economic conference...

Globalisation has created a whole new working class - and they are reliving stories that were first played out a century ago. In Live Working or Die Fighting, Paul Mason tells the story of this new working class alongside the epic history of the global labour movement, from its formation in the factories of the 1800s through its near destruction by fascism in the 1930s and up to today's anti-globalisation movement.Blending exhilarating historical narrative with reportage f...

The incredible unexplored connections between two of history’s greatest leadersRonald Reagan and Winston Churchill were true giants of the twentieth century, but somehow historians have failed to notice the many similarities between these extraordinary leaders. Until now.In Greatness, Steven F. Hayward—who has written acclaimed studies of both Reagan and Churchill—goes beneath the superficial differences to uncover the remarkable (and remarkably important) parallel...