Warfare & defence

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century

The epic successor to Tim Weiner’s National Book Award-winning classic, Legacy of Ashes: a gripping and revelatory history of the CIA in the 21st century, reaching from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s battles with Russia and China – and with the President of the United States.

The Spy in the Archive: How one man tried to kill the KGB

The compulsively readable new book from The Rest is Classified host Gordon Corera. About how one man – Vasili Mitrokhin – turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West.

The Demon of Unrest: Abraham Lincoln & America’s Road to Civil War

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this ‘riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult’ (Los Angeles Times).

Sword: D-Day – Trial by Battle

‘The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword, Hastings’s portrait of the individual soldiers who risked their lives on the beaches of Normandy. He brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose’ THE TIMES

Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE

‘A wake-up call’ Amal Clooney

‘Devastating… rape and sexual abuse continue to be a pervasive and all-too-often hidden feature of conflict zones the world over’ HM Queen Camilla

The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War

‘Entertaining and vivid… This is a gripping account of an intriguing and little-known Cold War moment’ OBSERVER

‘Reads like a thriller’ THE SUN

The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

Looking at Women, Looking at War

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE

WITH A FOREWORD FROM MARGARET ATWOOD

‘This book would always have been important evidence that the Ukraine people were suffering criminal attack. Written by a poet, it is also a work of literature, published after the author lost her life doing her research. It is an icon of a young woman’s heroism’ Philippa Gregory

Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

‘A rigorous and thoughtful study of what has happened on battlefields over the past eight decades’ THE TIMES

‘A hugely important book … elegantly written and persuasively argued’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos

An Aspects of History Best Book of the Year; An Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of the Year

‘A rigorous, myth-busting look at the city’s chaotic recovery in the wake of war and fascism’ Financial Times

Operation Biting: Signed edition

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful.

SAS: The Illustrated History of the SAS

The authorised illustrated history of the SAS by the number one bestselling author of Dunkirk, Joshua Levine. With never-before-seen photographs and unheard stories, this is the SAS’s wartime history in vivid and astonishing detail.

The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan

A Times Political Book of the Year 2022

A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy.

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