Bøker av Alistair Horne

The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Sir Alistair Horne has been a close observer of war and history for more than fifty years, and in this wise and masterly work, he revisits six battles of the past century and examines the strategies, leadership, preparation, and geopolitical goals of aggressors and defenders to reveal the one trait that links them all: hubris.In Greek tragedy, hubris is excessive human pride that challenges the gods and ultimately leads to total destruction of the offender. From the 1905 Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War to Hitler's 1941 bid to capture Moscow, to MacArthur's disastrous advance in Korea, to the French downfall at Dien Bien Phu, Horne shows how each of these battles was won or lost due to excessive hubris on one side or the other. In a sweeping narrative written with his trademark erudition and wit, Horne provides a meticulously detailed analysis of the ground maneuvers employed by the opposing armies in each battle. He also explores the strategic and psychological mind-set of the military leaders involved to demonstrate how devastating combinations of human ambition and arrogance led to overreach. Making clear the danger of hubris in warfare, his insights hold resonant lessons for civilian and military leaders navigating today's complex global landscape.A dramatic, colorful, stylishly written history, Hubris is a much-needed reflection on war from a master of his field.

?EMINENTLY PROVOCATIVE AND READABLE.??THE WALL STREET JOURNALSir Alistair Horne has been a close observer of war and history for more than fifty years and in this wise and masterly work, he revisits six battles of the past century and examines the strategies, leadership, preparation, and geopolitical goals of aggressors and defenders to reveal the one trait that links them all: hubris.In Greek tragedy, hubris is excessive human pride that challenges the gods and ultimately leads to total destruction of the offender. From the 1905 Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War, to Hitler's 1941 bid to capture Moscow, to MacArthur's disastrous advance in Korea, to the French downfall at Dien Bien Phu, Horne shows how each of these battles was won or lost due to excessive hubris on one side or the other. In a sweeping narrative written with his trademark erudition and wit, Horne provides a meticulously detailed analysis of the ground maneuvers employed by the opposing armies in each battle. He also explores the strategic and psychological mindset of the military leaders involved to demonstrate how devastating combinations of human ambition and arrogance led to overreach. Making clear the danger of hubris in warfare, his insights hold resonant lessons for civilian and military leaders navigating today's complex global landscape.A dramatic, colorful, stylishly-written history, Hubris is a much-needed reflection on war from a master of his field.

Opening with the military preparations before Paris was besieged by the invading German army in September 1870, Alistair Horne's compelling account of this dramatic episode takes the reader through the fall of Paris and German victory to the last days of the Paris Commune in May Week 1871.

General Montgomery lead the 8th Army to victory at El Alamein in 1942, and as Chief of Land Forces in the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 he received Germany's surrender in 1945. Concentrating on the momentous events of Operation Overlord from June 1944, The Lonely Leader follws Monty's leadership of the Allied offensive to Luneburg Heath the following May. Monty is a figure renowned for his military professionalism, but Alistair Horne, in association with montgomery's only son, also look at the human face of a man regarded as rather Cromwellian, considering his style of command in the context of the tactics and politics of the period, not least his controversial dealings with Eisenhower. This is a compelling account of the public and private influences of a remarkable military leader.

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture.Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algeria's independence, and yet—as Alistair Horne argues in his new preface to his now-classic work of history—its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world. Indeed from today's vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad—struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity.A Savage War of Peace is the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian's art.

In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry.To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).

The collapse of France in 1870 had an overwhelming impact on Paris, on France and on the rest of the world. People everywhere saw Paris as the centre of Europe and the hub of culture, fashion and invention. Suddenly France, not least to the disbelief of her own citizens, was gripped in the vice of the Iron Chancellor s armies and forced to surrender on humiliating terms. In this brilliant study of the Siege and its aftermath, Alistair Horne evokes the high drama of those ten fantastic months and the spiritual agony which Paris and the Parisians suffered.The Fall of Paris is the first part of the trilogy including To Lose a Battle and The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).