Most Popular Books by Richard HOLMES

Endorsed by the IWM, the book includes rare memorabilia from their archives, as well as painstakingly researched documents from the archives of D-Day museums in Normandy.

A wide-ranging and powerfully incisive study of the military experience, Firing Line attempts to grasp the very nature of war.It draws on written accounts of war over the past two centuries, and on the spoken recollections of veterans from two World Wars, from Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands and the Arab-Israeli conflicts. It builds an astonishing picture of what motivates the soldier and enables him to maintain the struggle in conditions of physical and mental degradation. It reveals the humiliation of basic training, the soldier''s attitude to fear, the compelling effect of personal leadership, the drive for sex and loot, and the elixir of comradeship.Here is a totality of what Richard Holmes describes as the most passionate drama of all.

I am Soldier brings together the profiles of sixty soldiers who have fought over the past 2,500 years. These vivid accounts graphically depict the role of the soldier in battle often using the soldiers'' own words to reveal what they felt during the chaos of war and its aftermath. From the Spartans at Thermopylae to the war in the Persian Gulf, this book shows the lives of the individual men and woman who made up the great armies that changed the world.

From the hand-to-hand combat of the ancient Assyrians to the fixed artillery battles of World War I, provides a chronicle of the development of warfare, highlighting changes in equipment and weaponry.

As we approach the 21st century our fears are changing shape: no longer will nuclear holocaust hold sway in our minds as God''s destruction by fire and brimstone did for our ancestors at the end of the first millennium. Refugees streaming north from the poverty-stricken south, destruction of the planet''s life-preserving balance and the epidemic of AIDS nurture a more insidious dread that won''t yield to the simple logic of deterrence. What then will have to be faced in future battles? Where will the lines of defence be drawn, and what will be left for the serving soldier to do?

A unique work combining military history and travel, which studies the most fought-over area on earth. De Gaulle called it a "fatal avenue" that broad sweep of low-lying country stretching north east of Paris. Over the centuries, invading armies have swept back and forth over this bloody terrain, and the names of battles fought here read like a dictionary of military history from Agincourt, Calais and Crecy to Verdun, Vimy and Ypres. Fatal Avenue is both a history and a guide a unique study of a region that has witnessed more bitter military conflict than any other area of its size on earth. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A handsomely illustrated photographic account, by the bestselling author of ''Tommy'' (2003), of the human experience of war as directly witnessed by British soldiers in the First World War.

Dramatic, hard hitting, and intensely moving, this book is a unique visula testament to the many millions of men and women who lost their lives in the war, and a reminder to today''s younger generations.

Skillfully clarifies the complexities of four major World War II military campaigns: El Alamein, Italy, Arnhem, and the Battle of Britain. In this study of war Holmes recreates what it was really like to be in the midst of bloody conflict from the eye-witness accounts of servicemen and women.

This title covers the Battle of Preston, fought in 1648 during the Second Civil War. In this battle Oliver Cromwell and his force, made up of regiments of the New Model Army and Lancashire militia, defeated the army of Scots and English Royalists under the Duke of Hamilton.

"Written by one of Britain''s best-known and respected military historians, The D-Day Experience contains over 30 facsimile items of rare D-Day memorabilia integrated into the pages of the book. The reader can relive this momentous period of history by holding and examining maps, diaries, letters, secret memos and reports, posters and logbooks, which up until now have remained filed or exhibited in the Imperial War Museum and other collections around the world."--Slipcase.