This study examines the origins, character and effectiveness of air policing and its role not only in offering a cheaper means of "pacification", but also in securing the survival of the Royal Air Force as an independent service. The book identifies its significance in specific geographical contexts, its effects on the mentality of imperial adminis...more

A vital instrument of power, telecommunications is and has always been a political technology. In this book, Headrick examines the political history of telecommunications from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II. He argues that this technology gave society new options. In times of peace, the telegraph and radio were, as many pr...more

Beginning with the Abbe Nollet's famous experiment of 1746, when he successfully demonstrated that electricity could pass from one end to the other of a chain of two hundred monks, Tom Standage tells the story of the spread of the telegraph and its transformation of the Victorian world. The telegraph was greeted by all the same concerns, hype, soci...more

In 1900, Ireland was a restless, impoverished, neglected corner of the British Empire. By 2000, it had become the "Celtic Tiger" of Europe. How did this happen? This landmark book by one of today's most exciting young historians sets out to give a full account of what it was like to grow up and live in twentieth-century Ireland, and it is the fi...more

A cradle-to-the-grave of one of the most intriguing rulers in history, King Frederick the Great who raised the small kingdom of Prussia to major power status in the turbulent military and political struggles of the 18th century. A cruel childhood forced him to lie, deceive and cheat in order to enjoy, if only for brief periods, the life of an intel...more

Here, for the first time in one volume, is the full story of crimes committed by the Nazi leaders and of the trials in which they were brought to judgement. Conot reconstructs in a single absorbing narrative not only the events at Nuremburg but the offenses with which the accused were charged. He brilliantly characterizes each of the twenty-one def...more