bibliotheque

Gigantic chef-d'oeuvre: a 600-page life that puts Dietrich before us as no book has ever done and whose writing sets a new standard for celebrity biographies. Bach (Final Cut, 1985) spent six years researching and writing this life; talked with Dietrich...

Traces the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his birth in 1882 through his youth, early political career, and presidency to his death in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945. Photographs and text trace the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his birth...

This first full-length English-language biography of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's notorious foreign minister, is also an authoritative account of the social and political workings of Nazi Germany. The result of a lifetime of research and firsthand...

For the 50th anniversary of one of WW II's pivotal campaigns, Gelb (Dunkirk, 1989, etc.) skillfully recounts the Allied invasion of North Africa, which--while itself of inherent strategic importance--became primarily significant as a testing ground for...

Mengele was in charge of the ``selection process'' at the death camp Auschwitz, but he was also a genetic scientist with a special interest in twins. During the war he subjected some 3000 twins, mostly young, to experiments of unspeakable horror. Only...

Paul Castellano headed New York's immensely powerful Gambino crime family for more than ten years. On December 16, 1985, he was gunned down in a spectacular shooting on Manhattan's fashionable East Side. At the time of his death, Paul Castellano was under...

Fallait-il publier ? ne pas publier ? devant ce journal de guerre explosant de la haine de Drieu contre tous et tout, les femmes, les juifs, ses meilleurs amis et lui-même, c'est la question que beaucoup se poseront et que se sont posée tous les responsables...

La Grande Guerre : comment elle fut déclarée, comment elle fut menée - et notamment du côté français -, comment elle s'est terminée : Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Jean-Pierre Azéma, Alain Barluet, Jean-Jacques Becker, Serge Berstein, Jacques Droz, Jean-Baptiste...

This book is a study of the reports of the Einsatzgruppen, the four SS extermination squads that followed in the wake of the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. It was the Einsatzgruppen that began the systematic massacre of Jews and other...

Lacouture follows up his De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890-1944 (1990) with another admiring volume, tracing how the triumphant leader of the Free French consolidated his position as the colossus bestriding his country's political institutions. The author sees...

In the early 1920s, a tiny group was formed within the SA to serve as Hitler's personal bodyguard. Originally labelled the "Stosstruppe Adolf Hitler," they later became known as the SS – Schutz Staffeln, or "protection squads." From these humble beginnings,...

From the deadly shores of North Africa to the invasion of Sicily to the fierce jungle hell of the Pacific, the contribution of the World War II Ranger Battalions far outweighed their numbers. They were ordinary men on an extraordinary mission, experiencing...

President Lyndon B. Johnson, by Executive Order No. 11130 dated November 29, 1963, created this Commission to investigate the assassination on November 22,1963, of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. The President directed...

In ``The Library of Famous Women'' series, an easily read biography with enough historical data to provide a clear context and many photos of people, places, and events. The bulk of the book covers the period of the diary, which is discussed with some...

How was the Gestapo able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines—especially "crimes" pertaining to the private spheres of social, family, and sexual life? How could the police enforce policies such as those designed to isolate...

Even allowing for the destruction of the German WW I military archives during the allied bombing of Potsdam, the absence of studies of the German side of that war has been remarkable--a deficiency, however, excellently remedied here by noted military-historian...

Transcending the usual lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous sensationalism, Stasz (American Dreamers, 1988, etc.) here creates a captivating and thoughtful blend of social history and family chronicle. Blessed with unassailable pedigree and unimaginable...

A former colonel and much-decorated Luftwaffe pilot, veteran of nearly six years of serial warfare over Germany, Russia and the Black Sea, presents what is perhaps a biased, but certainly an intelligent and well-written account of his service. He covers...

Continuing our review of military classics, Military Times looks at A J P Taylor’s controversial publication on the causes of the Second World War . For a book about events a quarter of a century in the past, the storm raised by the publication of A J...

Stephen E. Ambrose draws upon extensive sources, an unprecedented degree of scholarship, and numerous interviews with Eisenhower himself to offer the fullest, richest, most objective rendering yet of the soldier who became president. He gives us a masterly...

From LBJ's domestic adviser, a memoir that shows the President ``with the bark off''cagey, crude, demanding, and, finally, Shakespearean in his pitiful descent from power. Here, unlike in Governing America (1981), his take-no- prisoners account of his...

D'un naturel flexible et velléitaire, Nicolas II, le dernier tsar, " n'était pas né, selon son propre ministre des Finances, le comte Witte, pour le magistral rôle historique que la destinée lui avait imposé". Et il est vrai que, dans la Russie tumultueuse...

From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation--a nation where reality...

Doris Kearns Goodwin's classic life of Lyndon Johnson, who presided over the Great Society, the Vietnam War, and other defining moments the tumultuous 1960s, is a monument in political biography. From the moment the author, then a young woman from Harvard,...

Voici un texte qui, par la controverse qu'il suscita dès sa parution chez les historiens, eut le mérite essentiel de contraindre ceux-ci à entreprendre des recherches nouvelles sur le génocide des Juifs par les nazis. En effet, le reportage d'Hannah Arendt,...

Von Rundstedt's military career was a turbulent one. A Prussian aristocrat and member of the General Staff in World War I, he helped to modernize the German armed forces before policy disagreements led to his premature retirement in 1938. Frequently sacked...

In the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezin), rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1959), leader of German Jewry, served as teacher and comforter to fellow inmates. He survived the Holocaust and spent another decade as a guiding light of world Jewry, shuttling...

Après un examen approfondi des articles, des livres et des archives de l'époque confrontés aux témoignages de certains témoins, Peter Novick a étudié avec circonspection tous les procès de la Haute Cour de justice, de celui de l'amiral Esteva (1945) à...

This is the first authoritative account of the postwar relationship between General Reinhard Gehlen, a figure unique in the history of espionage, and American intelligence. Eleven years after the defeat of Germany, Gehlen, Hitler's chief of eastern front...

Pour Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, l'histoire russe peut s'analyser comme une histoire continue du meurtre politique... Pour échapper à ce cycle fatal, estime à juste titre l'auteur au terme de cet essai fort instructif, une ultime exécution est indispensable,...