Hand-written accounts by Allied officers inside Oflag 1V-C, confined within the impregnable cold walls of Colditz Castle during WW2. Two Canadian army officers passed a logbook from a Red Cross parcel among the officers and men so that they could write their own stories to be published after the war. Although much of the logbook was typed and printed in 1946, the original writings were concealed in a bedroom drawer for nearly 70 years before finally seeing the light of day. They are now printed in their original historical form, exquisitely neat handwriting in pencil, dense across the pages but still very clear in these facsimile plates and beautifully typeset text transcript opposite together with an explanation about the writer. In meticulously written pages they bring to life many episodes of courageous prison camp escapes, air, land and sea battles, bombing raids, incarceration, deprivation and even amusing wartime experiences plus poems and drawings of their vivid experiences. 288 large, quality pages plus 30 pages of colour photos and portraits of the officers with their ranks and more illustrations.

Nurses give Tube shelter garlic oil for prevention of flu as they take cover at St Johns Wood tube station during the Blitz or work at Villa Day Nursery, opened for the express purpose of releasing women for war work. A record output of 200,000 bricks in 48 hours was reached by a staff of eight women and two ex-soldiers, working to do their bit. Women assemble cylinder studs on crank cases of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines for the RAF bombers and other women workers destroy shells at the end of the war where the cordite was removed from 6-pounder shell cases. Here are Wrens on the River Tees 1945 or chatting to an American sailor in a pub in Northern Ireland, Sea Rangers at Cobham having a tea break sat on a blanket on the ground, a Petty Officer woman taking rifle training instruction, women rat catchers, land girls on horseback in the countryside or harvesting oats, WAAFs on an RAF base wheeling out their bicycles, women of the ATS who repaired army vehicles, operating searchlights or undertaking precision work in the Instrument Department. Plus boot polishing, fishing, keeping over 200 warships in order, manning AA guns, cutting logs in the Forestry Commission, gathering potatoes in a field - typically a man's job. 144pp of fantastic nostalgic photographs, last one a cheeky female chimney sweep.

While serving as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army in the American Civil War, Louisa May Alcott recorded her experiences in the letters she sent home, later published under this title. They provide a raw and honest account of the reality of battlefield medicine in a conflict that tore her country apart. Her compassionate narrative also highlights the under-appreciated role of women in medicine. This short book marked the beginning of her astonishingly successful career which culminated in the publication of Little Women. Born in November 1832, on her 30th birthday she spent six transformative weeks at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Washington DC, 500 miles from home and surrounded by dead, dying and diseased soldiers where twice as many died of disease as from fighting the enemy. Alcott nearly suffered the same fate, contracting typhoid pneumonia and was only saved when her father arrived at the hospital to take her home. He was an abolitionist and her mother a suffragist and their involvement in a number of radical movements meant Louisa and her siblings were surrounded by some of the periods best known writers and thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and she received tuition from Henry David Thoreau. 112 page new full price paperback.

Sinclair McKay's portrait of Berlin from 1919 forward explores the city's broad human history, from the end of the Great War to the Blockade, rise of the Wall, and beyond. It begins by taking readers back to 1919 when the city emerged from the shadows of the Great War to become an extraordinary by-word for modernity - in art, cinema, architecture, industry, science, and politics. McKay traces the city's history through the rise of Hitler and the Battle for Berlin which ended in the final conquest of the city in 1945. It was a key moment in modern world history, but beyond the global repercussions lay thousands of individual stories of agony. From the countless women who endured nightmare ordeals at the hands of the Soviet soldiers to the teenage boys fitted with steel helmets too big for their heads and guns too big for their hands, McKay thrusts readers into the human cataclysm that tore down the modernity of the streets and reduced what was once the most sophisticated city on earth to ruins. Amid the destruction, a collective instinct was also at work - a determination to restore not just the rhythms of urban life, but also its fierce creativity. In Berlin today, there is a growing and urgent recognition that the testimonies of the housewives, office clerks, factory workers, and exuberant teenagers who witnessed these years of terrifying - and for some, initially exhilarating - transformation should be heard. "The author devoted inordinate amount of details to the fall of the Third Reich and the action Red Army towards Berliners and raced through the years of the Weimar Republic between the construction of the wall till it was torn down. Nevertheless he did mention the American airlift, the Soviet blockade and the atomic research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute." "Dissolution" and "Necropolis," the largest parts of McKay's book, focus on Berlin in 1945, especially April and May, the fall of Berlin and arrival of the dreaded Red Army. The third part "Possession" deals with the GDR and ends with the tear down of the Berlin Wall. McKay believes that "You cannot understand the twentieth century without understanding Berlin." Many rare photos, 16.64 x 24.2 cm, 464 pages.

In three global conflicts and countless colonial campaigns between 1795 and 1945, tens of thousands of black West Indian soldiers fought and died for Britain, first as slave formation the West Indian Regiment, and then as volunteers including African troops. The British West Indies Regiment which served in Europe, the Middle East and Africa during WWI and the 1st Caribbean Infantry which served in Italy and the Middle East during WWII were also part of the British Army rather than colonial formations. All were stepchild units, despised and an embarrassment to an army that was loath to number black soldiers in its ranks and yet unable to do without them; their courage, endurance and loyalty were repaid with prejudice, mistreatment and imperial ingratitude, bigotry and abuse. For many years the West Indies rather than India was the heart of the British Empire. Control of the Caribbean and its riches dominated British colonial policy in the 17th and 18th centuries and Britain fought a long series of wars against France and other European powers for mastery of the islands. Barry Renfrew shines a light on the experiences of these overlooked soldiers who had travelled thousands of miles to serve the empire but were denied recognition in their lifetimes. From British campaigns in the Caribbean to the Second World War, this is a saga of war, bondage, hardship, mutiny, forlorn outposts and remarkable fortitude. Illus, 256 pages.

A surprising view of the First World War as seen through the eyes of the early cycling champions with outstanding historical pictures and illustrations that have never been published before. On 28 June 1914, there were two almost simultaneous shots. In Paris, the 12th Tour de France was about to start, while in Sarajevo the Austrian crown prince Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Professional cycle racing came to a halt, but the first cycling heroes continued to race. The Belgian cycling author Patrick Cornillie takes us through the wartime editions of the Tour of Flanders, which were ridden on a velodrome just north of Ghent. With humour, the book tells the stories of a champion who was a spy, a one-legged Italian cyclist, some famous British and German idols, and the perilous bike adventures of a well-known Belgian author. With sadness, we learn about the fate of a French winner of the Tour, killed in battle, Gustaaf Mus shot by firing squad, saboteurs, Crupelandt and his flight from Berlin to Roubaix, a renowned cyclist held hostage, the death rider from Lichtervelde, the brave Black Devils, and the many military cyclist-soldiers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada who died at the front. Plus crashes and races and cycling reporters, tour winners dying for their country, bridegrooms, and the female ex-racer who designed an air ambulance. Superbly well illustrated extra large 208 page paperback.

Chapter one: 'Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar... Whenever I heard something outside of our clenched little circle I'd practically flip... a couple of rounds fired off in the dark a kilometre away and the Elephant would be there kneeling on my chest, sending me down into my boots for a breath. Once I thought I saw a light moving in the jungle...' A groundbreaking piece of journalism which inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket. Michael Herr went to Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire. He returned to tell the real story in all its hallucinatory madness and brutality, cutting to the quick of the conflict and its seductive, devastating impact on a generation of young men. His unflinching account is haunting in its violence, but even more so in its honesty. First published in 1977, Dispatches was a revolutionary piece of new journalism that evoked the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam and has forever shaped our understanding of the conflict. It is now a seminal classic of war reportage. The book conveys all the facades of patriotism, heroism and the whole colossal fraud of American intervention. It all falls away to the bare bones of fear, war and death. With an introduction by Kevin Powers. Remainder mark, 288 page paperback.

The photographs collected in this unique book provide a startling visual documentation of seminal revolutionary events, from the Paris Commune of 1871 through to a series of "Unfinished Revolutions", from May 1968 in France to the Zapatista uprising in the mid 1990s. They include the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and revolutions in Hungary, Germany, Mexico, China, the Spanish Civil War and the Cuban Revolution. The immediacy of the images tells the story of these struggles in a way that texts rarely can, with shocking contemporary photographs such as the barricade showing the scene after a battle, teeming with people, soldiers, shock troops and bystanders, the barricades riddled with holes seen in a daguerreotype taken from a window on June 20th and 26, 1948 and as described by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. Commentary on the images is provided by leading historians Gilbert Achcar, Enzo Traverso, Janette Habel, and Pierre Rousset, and Michael Löwy. The relatively new media of photography provided a method which abstracts the subjective responsibility arising from personality culture and political choices on the part of the photographer. Chunky 540 pages, fully illus with hundreds of rare mono images.

Sub-titled Soldiers and Ambulances 1914-1918 In Flanders Fields and Ypres, Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-2014, this book is a study of the suffering of war, which can be overwhelming. The book is exceptionally well illustrated with posters, colour artworks, archive images, modern photographs and some very harrowing photos depicting blown away body parts including faces, amputated legs and very badly injured soldiers which some may find distressing, but also angelic nurses and portraits and exquisitely beautiful artworks on every page. Offering both analysis and reflection, this intensely moving book looks at the way in which psychiatrists, reporters, artists and war photographers currently perceive and treat the psychological suffering, the often invisible legacy of those involved in war and human conflict. At the beginning of the first world war, not a single European army was prepared to deal with the large numbers of victims in a humanitarian way. How were injured soldiers taken care of and who did this? How were the victims evacuated, and how many were truly traumatised or were "male hysterics"? The firepower of the armies was increased, the defence reinforced, but victim care continued to lag seriously behind. Philanthropy, private initiative and the courageous efforts of many individuals had to make up for the failing medical care during the war. Read about the Friends' Ambulance Unit which was working under the flag of the British Red Cross and the work of the Quakers. As the war progressed, medical care also developed and organisation and relief improved. The greatest breakthrough was, however, the recognition - albeit reluctantly - of mental trauma caused by the war. During World War I, many soldiers fell victim to bizarre, anxious and disturbed behaviour, which was sometimes referred to as "shell shock". The army commanders seemed reluctant to recognise a formal diagnosis, questioning whether men were really traumatised or simply cowards who were trying to stay away from the horrific and terrifying reality of the Front. Whereas in the early 20th century, the focus was mainly on the shock itself and the outward physical symptoms, today there is a far more in-depth exploration of the complex nature of the human reaction to extreme stress, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. A rare import, 192 page extra large sized illustrated paperback, colour.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

In 1937, Helene Munson's father lived with his parents in Peru and was taken to Germany to visit his Auntie Tali, a schoolteacher working in Bremen. Somehow Tali persuaded nine-year old Hans Dunker's parents that it would be good for him to stay in Germany to get a good education. He was sent to an elite school run by the Nazis at Feldafing, and towards the end of the war, as the resources of the German army failed, he was conscripted to the front line as a boy soldier. Helene knew nothing about it until her father was dying and he gave her his diaries. Prompted by this revelation, she visited Germany to retrace her father's steps and stand in his shoes at certain key points in his story. Feldafing was the most elite of the Nazi schools, founded by Ernst Röhm, but it fell into decline following the start of the war. Each day the boys raised the flag at 5.30 in the morning and had five hours of lessons before lunch, and they were taught to feel superior to the ordinary boys of the Hitler youth. Helene's researches into Nazi schools led her to speculate about the motives of famous alumni such as Gunter Grass and Joseph Ratzinger. She made contact with other Feldafing alumni, including Franz who knew her father, and learned that in 1943 her father was conscripted, like all boys aged 15 - 17, and trained as an anti-aircraft gunner. There were a few laws intended to protect children such as a prohibition on alcohol and tobacco. Americans were horrified to fight and kill, and sometimes be killed by, boys this young with inadequate training, ammunition and rations. Towards the end of the war Hans progressed to the Waffen-SS led by Himmler, architect of the Holocaust. Helene visited Zavada a village in present-day Czech Republic, the scene of the battle her father was unable to talk about, where, as squad leader, he had to pick nine boys to fight the Russian advance with inadequate artillery. The author quotes extensively from her father's diaries and examines the traumatic effect on the rest of his life and a generation of children who silently carried the shame of what they suffered into old age. 271 pages, photos.