Author: Max Hastings File Type: mobi ReviewHastings is a military historian in the grand tradition . . . He is equally adept at analyzing the broad sweep of strategy and creating thrilling set pieces that put the reader in the cockpit of a fighter plane or the conning tower of a submarine.br --Evan Thomas, _The New York Times Book Reviewbr _br Compelling . . . To the broad sweep of military events Mr. Hastings adds myriad human stories . . . and he does not hesitate to offer his own keen analysis along the way.br --Peter R. Kann, The Wall Street Journal The great merit of Max Hastingss many books on war is his skill at bringing the numbers, as it were, down to earth. Through the imaginative power of his writing, we get an inkling . . . of what it must have been like to slog ones way up a cliff at Iwo Jima, or be firebombed in Tokyo.br --Ian Buruma, _New York Review of Booksbr _br Hastings has another winner . . . This book is first-rate popular history, stiffened with a strongly stated point of view . . . A close-up and personal look at war as it affected real people, and how it felt to them at the time.--Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Explosive, argumentative, intensely researched . . . Demands to be read. A book of stunning disclosures.--Tom Mackin, Sunday Star-Ledger [A] masterful interpretive narrative . . . Hastings is both comprehensive and finely acute.br --_Booklist_ Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard. br --Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph A triumph . . . The key to the books success lies not in its accessibility, nor in its vivid portraits of the key figures in the drama--although it has both--but in something else entirely the authors supremely confident ambition.br --Laurence Rees, _The Sunday Timesbr _br Extraordinary . . . Anyone who believes that were all living through a uniquely troubled time should read this . . . book. br --Georgie Rose, _The Sunday Heraldbr _br This is a book not only for military history buffs but for anyone who wants to understand what happened in half the world during one of the bloodiest periods of the blood-soaked 20th century.br --_The Spectatorbr _br Highly readable . . . An admirably balanced re-examination of the last phases of a conflict that it is not fashionable to remember.br --Dan van der Vat, _The Guardianbr _br Engrossing . . . Its originality lies in the meticulousness of the authors research and the amazing witnesses he has found.br --Murray Sayle, _The Evening Standardbr _br Hastings is . . . a master of the sort of detail that illuminates the human cost. It is the way he leaps so adeptly to and fro between the vast panorama and the tiny snapshot pictures that makes him such a readable historian.--_Mail on Sundaybr _Hailed in Britain as Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph), a riveting, impeccably informed chronicle of the final year of the Pacific war. In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan. By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japans defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing dramathat ended in Japans utter devastationwas acted out across the vast stage of Asia, with massive clashes of naval and air forces, fighting through jungles, and barbarities by an apparently incomprehensible foe. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theaters key figuresMacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailorsAmerican, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanesecaught in some of the wars bloodiest campaigns. With unprecedented insight, Hastings discusses Japans war against China, now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthurs follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasakiwhich, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day. Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.

Author: François Mauriac File Type: pdf Entre 1905 et 1925 Francois Mauriac redigea plus de trois cents articles dans divers journaux et revues litteraires et culturelles, souvent mais pas toujours dinspiration catholique. Au cours de la meme periode, il produisit trois recueils de poemes, huit romans et plusieurs essais. Apres une longue introduction critique le volume presente une selection representative de ces articles parmi lesquels se trouvent des reflexions philosophiques, des observations politiques et souvent polemiques, des chroniques theatrales et des comptes-rendus de nombreux romans et de recueils poetiques. Lensemble constitue un riche commentaire sur le monde culturel, intellectuel et politique de lepoque contemporaine. Deja se fait entendre la voix de celui qui signera une trentaine dannees plus tard le celebre bloc-notes dans Le Figaro et LExpress, avec son humour, son ironie, ses eclats de colere et son mepris a peine deguise mais, en meme temps, sa sensibilite caracteristique, son humanisme et des expressions de sa foi profonde. **