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9780008280529

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Praise for Vietnam `Masterpiece ... manages with great skill to combine the accumulation of strategic and political disaster with the real experience of those fighting on the ground' Antony Beevor, Spectator `Will surely set the benchmark for years to come... This may be his best... Exhaustively researched and superbly written, it is both a balanced account of how and why the war unfolded as it did, and a gripping narrative on what it was like to take part...History as it should be: objective, immersive and compelling' Daily Telegraph, 5* `Magnificent... One by one, the sacred canons of right and left are obliterated. The war is laid bare, with all its uncomfortable truths exposed' The Times `Powerful and chilling... Hastings is masterful at describing the conditions faced by young American soldiers... [he] is second to none in his ability to describe military strategy with a clarity that makes things entirely understandable to the layman' Mail on Sunday, 5* `An altogether magnificent historical narrative' Tim O'Brien `A masterpiece' Frank Scotton `Magnificent, his best work ... full of extraordinary and compelling detail and thoroughly informed by his own personal experience of so much of the war. It's written in unputdownable style, with a dispassionate, liberal-minded understanding of the detail of the war, which draws on testimony from every side and doesn't favour anyone. I've never read a better history of the wars in Vietnam, and it's hard to see how anyone will be able to improve on this' John Simpson `Neophytes and experts alike will find Hastings's book stimulating, informative - and above all, riveting' New Statesman `This fabulous work offers up a gut-wrenching glimpse of the reality of war' The Sun, 5*

Praise for Chastise ‘A virtuoso performance from a veteran military historian. It is a white-knuckle narrative that brings clarity and insight to a much-loved tale, as well as offering a vital corrective to the drum-thumping conclusions of earlier books.’ Sunday Times ‘Hastings recounts the actual raids with dramatic intensity … He brings us into those Lancasters, flying perilously low, straight into flak … Superb.’ Times ‘Thoughtful and gripping … This is a fine book combining great storytelling with a deep appreciation of the melancholy and waste that march in step with glory.’ Patrick Bishop, Telegraph ‘What is at stake in this revision of the old glorious narrative is something important. The debate over whether this particular raid mattered is, in miniature, the wider historiographical debate over the morals and efficacy of the whole bombing war … A powerful parable which might instruct us in our own confused times.’ Spectator ‘Hastings, who is a master of his craft, unfolds the story skilfully … It doesn’t matter how many times you have seen the film, or heard the story, this book is gripping from start to finish’ Keith Lowe, Literary Review ‘A riveting account that also shines a light on the fact that more than 1,400 civilians died in the floods that followed … It’s a monumental read’ Sun ‘A fine book about that moonlit Dambusters’ raid of 76 years ago, a worthy tribute to the men of 617 Squadron – and their hapless victims’ Sunday Express ‘A remarkable book … Combining formidable narrative power with equally potent explanatory insight, it situates the Dambusters Raid in the broader strategic context of World War II’ Washington Post

Author Information

Max Hastings is the author of twenty-six books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe and The Secret War, best-sellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.

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