Synopses & Reviews
The bestselling author of Stalingrad and D-Day vividly reconstructs the epic WWII struggle for Crete reissued with a new introduction. Nazi Germany expected its airborne attack on Crete in 1941 to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. Little did they know that the British, using Ultra intercepts, had already laid a careful trap. It should have been the first German defeat of the war when a fatal misunderstanding turned the battle around.
Prize-winning historian and bestselling author Antony Beevor lends his gift for storytelling to this important conflict, showing not only how the situation turned bad for Allied forces, but also how ferocious Cretan freedom fighters mounted a heroic resistance. Originally published in 1991, Crete 1941 is a breathtaking account of a momentous battle of World War II.
Review
Praise for
Crete 1941 “Few battles in World War II can surpass Crete for high drama, both on land and sea. Beevor, formerly of the 11th Hussars, writes about that battle with a soldier's eye and a historian's insight. Crete was a campaign unique in many respects, not the least of which was its ferocity. Beevor has a flair for re-creating the historical moment, and during sections of the text even the most detached reader will pause to catch a breath. He dissects the leadership of some of the war's most intriguing personalities, both Allied and German, illuminating their achievements and follies. His book is enriched with wonderful anecdotal material, some of which will both amuse and puzzle his American counterparts, whose military traditions are often so dissimilar. Recommended for both professional and general readership.”—Library Journal
“Excellent books have been written about the battle for Crete, but none, for me, has been as vivid and clear and exciting as Antony Beevors. His unerring flair for the climate and the feel of the conflict . . . his insight and his grasp of these events make them seem as though they had happened last week . . . This brilliant book.”—The Daily Telegraph (UK)
“Excellent . . . an arresting account of the whole war on Crete, including the ghastly experiences of the Cretans under German occupation.”—John Keegan, The Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Synopsis
"A rich and intriguing story whcih the authors disentangle with great skill."--Sunday Telegraph
Beevor'sArdennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulgeis now available from Viking Books
In this brilliant synthesis of social, political, and cultural history, Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper present a vivid and compelling portrayal of the City of Lights after its liberation. Paris became the diplomatic battleground in the opening stages of the Cold War. Against this volatile political backdrop, every aspect of life is portrayed: scores were settled in a rough and uneven justice, black marketers grew rich on the misery of the population, and a growing number of intellectual luminaries and artists including Hemingway, Beckett, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Cocteau, and Picassocontributed new ideas and a renewed vitality to this extraordinary moment in time."
Synopsis
A rich and intriguing story whcih the authors disentangle with great skill.--Sunday Telegraph From Antony Beevor, the internationally bestselling author of D-Day and The Battle of Arnhem
In this brilliant synthesis of social, political, and cultural history, Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper present a vivid and compelling portrayal of the City of Lights after its liberation. Paris became the diplomatic battleground in the opening stages of the Cold War. Against this volatile political backdrop, every aspect of life is portrayed: scores were settled in a rough and uneven justice, black marketers grew rich on the misery of the population, and a growing number of intellectual luminaries and artists including Hemingway, Beckett, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Cocteau, and Picassocontributed new ideas and a renewed vitality to this extraordinary moment in time.
Synopsis
When Allied troops fought their way into Paris on August 25, 1944, they were greeted by the wildest scenes of joy Europe had ever witnessed. The following day, over a million people thronged the streets in a delirious atmosphere of freedom to watch General de Gaulle's triumphant march from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame. There was a black edge to the exuberance, though. Hatreds from the Vichy era led to the settling of scores in a chaos of often wild justice. The period that followed was full of contrast and contradiction: Picasso, a multimillionaire, became the Communist Party's star recruit; an infatuation with American popular culture thrived amid virulent anti-Americanism; black marketeers grew rich on the misery of the population; literary and social life revived miraculously amid the poverty and dilapidation; Christian Dior revolutionized fashion with the extravagant use of material, and working-class women tore the clothes in outrage from one of his models. Arthur Miller observed of Paris, emotionally scarred by the Occupation, that "the moral, the literary, and the political were the same". Paris was the focal point in the opening stages of the Cold War, and in the new era of the atom bomb. Existentialists and Communists arguing in cafes sensed that history had entered a decisive phase. At a time when rumor was as powerful as fact, word of plots and counterplots proliferated, and France came to the brink of civil war. Paris After the Liberation is the first work to do justice to this extraordinary period. It is a landmark achievement, a brilliant fusion of politics, literary life, society, theater, fashion, and art woven into a rich and intimate account brimming withrevelation. Acclaimed historians Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper (the granddaughter of England's first postwar ambassador to France) have drawn on an astonishing array of sources: unpublished diaries, letters, and photographs; interviews with many of the period's leading figures; and important material from archives in Paris, the United States, London, and Moscow, whose newly opened state papers have provided a wealth of completely fresh information, much of it startling. Paris After the Liberation brings to life a pivotal moment of world history, suffusing it with wit, anecdote, and brio. It is a brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable work of synthesis, a fitting celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris.
Synopsis
In this brilliant synthesis of social, political, and cultural history, Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper present a vivid and compelling portrayal of the City of Lights after its liberation. Paris became the diplomatic battleground in the opening stages of the Cold War. Against this volatile political backdrop, every aspect of life is portrayed: scores were settled in a rough and uneven justice, black marketers grew rich on the misery of the population, and a growing number of intellectual luminaries and artists? including Hemingway, Beckett, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Cocteau, and Picasso?contributed new ideas and a renewed vitality to this extraordinary moment in time.
About the Author
Antony Beevor is the author of several bestselling works of history. His wife, Artemis Cooper, is the author of Cairo in the War: 1939-1945 and Writing at the Kitchen Table.
Table of Contents
Paris: After the Liberation 1944-1949 Preface
Part One: The Tale of Two Countries
1. The Marshal and the General
2. The Paths of Collaboration and Resistance
3. The Resistance of the Interior and the Men of London
4. The Race for Paris
5. Liberated Paris
6. The Passage of Exiles
7. War Tourists and Ritzkrieg
8. The Epuration Sauvage
Part Two: L'etat, C'est De Gualle
9. Provisional Government
10. Corps Diplomatique
11. Liberators and Liberated
12. Writers and Artists in the Line of Fire
13. The Return of Exiles
14. The Great Trials
15. Hunger for the New
16. After the Deluge
17. Communists in Government
18. The Abduction of Charles XI
Part Three: Into the Cold War
19. The Shadow-Theatre: Plots and Counter-Plots
20. Politics and Letters
21. The Diplomatic Battleground
22, The Fashionable World
23. A Tale of Two Cities
24. Fighting Back against the Communists
25. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
26. The Republic at Bay
27. The Great Boom of Saint-Germain-des-Pres
28. The Curious Triangle
29. The Treason of the Intellectuals
Part Four: The New Normality
30. Americans in Paris
31. The Tourist Invasion
32. Paris sera toujours Paris
33. Recurring Fevers
References
Bibliography
Photographic Acknowledgments
Index