The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945

Author:   Max Hastings
Publisher:   HarperCollins Publishers
Edition:   edition
ISBN:  

9780007503919


Pages:   640
Publication Date:   10 September 2015
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945


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Overview

As gripping as any spy thriller, Max Hastings's account of the critical role of intelligence in the Second World War is the best yet.' Sunday Times Packed with insight and terrific spy stories, this masterly book looks at the secret war on a global basis, bringing together the British, American, German, Russian and Japanese histories. In `The Secret War', Max Hastings examines the espionage and intelligence machines of all sides in World War II, and the impact of spies, code-breakers and partisan operations on events. Written on a global scale, the book brings together accounts from British, American, German, Russian and Japanese sources to tell the story of a secret war waged unceasingly by men and women often far from the battlefields but whose actions profoundly influenced the outcome. Returning to the Second World War for the first time since his best-selling `All Hell Let Loose', Hastings weaves into a `big picture' framework, the human stories of spies and intelligence officers who served their respective masters. Told through a series of snapshots of key moments, the book looks closely at Soviet espionage operations which dwarfed those of every other belligerent in scale, as well as the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park – the greatest intelligence achievement of the conflict – with many more surprising and unfamiliar tales of treachery, deception, betrayal and incompetence by spies of Axis, Allied or indeterminate loyalty.

Full Product Details

Author:   Max Hastings
Publisher:   HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint:   William Collins
Edition:   edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.30cm , Height: 4.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.890kg
ISBN:  

9780007503919


ISBN 10:   0007503911
Pages:   640
Publication Date:   10 September 2015
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Reviews

'As gripping as any spy thriller. Hastings understands, better than any previous historian, that this is as much a story about human nature as it is about the mechanics of code-breaking or spycraft ... he has the novelist's eye for the telling detail ... this book works because Hastings is simply a very fine writer who is not afraid of making judgements ... Hastings's achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject' Lawrence Rees, Sunday Times 'This is his war and he writes with an easy assurance, scatter-gunning opinions ... Hastings is on form. He has set out to provide thought and discussion and, with his familiar robustness, shotgun at side, he has succeeded' The Times 'Authoritative, exciting and notably well written' Daily Telegraph 'A serious work of rigourous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and readable' Mail on Sunday 'Vintage Hastings: a vivid cast of characters, social observation and opinions forcefully expressed ... Given the national fixation with spies and special forces, Hastings's book is a very necessary corrective' Evening Standard 'There is plenty ... here to keep even the most war-jaded reader entertained. His great strength is to use his formidable journalistic talents to bring alive a cast of characters who operated in the shadow and it is the mark of an author at the top of his game that he is able to keep a multiplicity of narratives running without causing confusion' Country Life


Praise for Max Hastings: 'A work of staggering scope and erudition, narrated with supreme fluency and insight, it is unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written ... he writes with a wonderfully clear, unsentimental eye ... and has a terrific grasp of the grand sweep and military strategy ... But what makes his book a compelling read are the human stories ... at the end of this gruesome, chilling but quite magnificent book, you never doubt that the war was worth fighting' Sunday Times 'No other general history of the war amalgamates so successfully the gut-wrenching personal details and the essential strategic arguments. Melding the worm's eye view and the big picture is a difficult trick to pull of - but Hastings has triumphed' The Times 'Majestic ... it is impossible to emerge without a sense of the sheer scale of human tragedy ... To gather all these anecdotes together is a task in itself, but to assemble them in a way that makes sense is something entirely different ... Hastings shapes all these stories, almost miraculously, into a single coherent narrative' Daily Telegraph 'In this massive work, the crowning volume of the 10 impressive books he has written about the Second World War, Sir Max Hastings spares us nothing in portraying the sheer bloody savagery of the worst war that the world has yet seen ... this magnificent book ... is hypnotically readable from the first page to the last' Sunday Telegraph 'A fast-moving, highly readable survey of the entire war ... Hastings combines a mastery of the military events with invariably sound judgment and a sharp eye for unusual telling detail ... this is military history at its most gripping. Of all Max Hastings's valuable books, this is possibly his best - a veritable tour de force' Evening Standard


'This is his war and he writes with an easy assurance, scatter-gunning opinions ... Hastings is on form. He has set out to provide thought and discussion and, with his familiar robustness, shotgun at side, he has succeeded' The Times 'Hastings understands, better than any previous historian, that this is as much a story about human nature as it is about the mechanics of code-breaking or spycraft ... he has the novelist's eye for the telling detail ... this book works because Hastings is simply a very fine writer who is not afraid of making judgements' Lawrence Rees, Sunday Times 'Authoritative, exciting and notably well written' Daily Telegraph 'A serious work of rigourous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and readable' Mail on Sunday 'Vintage Hastings: a vivid cast of characters, social observation and opinions forcefully expressed ... Given the national fixation with spies and special forces, Hastings's book is a very necessary corrective' Evening Standard 'There is plenty ... here to keep even the most war-jaded reader entertained. His great strength is to use his formidable journalistic talents to bring alive a cast of characters who operated in the shadow and it is the mark of an author at the top of his game that he is able to keep a multiplicity of narratives running without causing confusion' Country Life


'As gripping as any spy thriller. Hastings understands, better than any previous historian, that this is as much a story about human nature as it is about the mechanics of code-breaking or spycraft ... he has the novelist's eye for the telling detail ... this book works because Hastings is simply a very fine writer who is not afraid of making judgements ... Hastings's achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject' Lawrence Rees, Sunday Times 'A total thriller with a full cast of killers, swashbucklers and beautiful adventuresses. The best history of war intelligence yet' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'This is his war and he writes with an easy assurance, scatter-gunning opinions ... Hastings is on form. He has set out to provide thought and discussion and, with his familiar robustness, shotgun at side, he has succeeded' The Times 'Authoritative, exciting and notably well written' Daily Telegraph 'A serious work of rigorous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and readable' Mail on Sunday 'Vintage Hastings: a vivid cast of characters, social observation and opinions forcefully expressed ... Given the national fixation with spies and special forces, Hastings's book is a very necessary corrective' Evening Standard 'Lively and entertaining ... a rich gallery of rogues, eccentrics and brainstorming professors which ... Hastings can manipulate with wonderful deftness' Observer 'A compendious, crisply argued and witty assessment' Financial Times '[Hastings] writes with infectious relish ... a magnificent parade of crooks, alcoholics and fantasists ... [he] has drawn fascinating fresh material ... A book that pulses along, yet is filled with acute insight into human ingenuity, frailty, and the ironies of evil' Spectator 'Magisterial ... an author at the top of his game' Country Life 'Hastings deploys a formidable arsenal to tell his human stories, plus a refreshing degree of scepticism' Daily Telegraph


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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