A "virtually faultless" account of the final weeks of World War II in the Pacific and the definitive history of the battle for Stalingrad together in one volume (The New York Times Book Review). Author William Craig traveled to three different continents, reviewed thousands of documents, and interviewed hundreds of survivors to write these New York Times–bestselling histories, bringing the Eastern Front and the Pacific Theater of World War II to vivid life. The Fall of Japan masterfully recounts the dramatic events that brought an end to the Pacific War and forced a once-mighty nation to surrender unconditionally. From the ferocious fighting on Okinawa to the all-but-impossible mission to drop the second atom bomb, and from Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House to the Tokyo bunker where tearful Japanese leaders first told the emperor the war was lost, Craig draws on Japanese and American perspectives to capture the pivotal...

Opposing superpowers play a deadly game of brinkmanship in this riveting Cold War thriller from the bestselling author of The Fall of Japan and Enemy at the Gates The Soviet Union delivers an ultimatum to the president of the United States: Surrender unconditionally within 72 hours or a secret weapon of unprecedented capabilities will take millions of American lives. President William Mellon Stark ran on a campaign of peace and kept his promises, slashing the military budget and pouring millions into domestic programs. Now the nation is years behind in the technology of mass destruction. Desperate measures are Stark's only options. In Soviet Asia, a team of Special Forces saboteurs led by Colonel Joe Safcek attempts to vaporize the mystery weapon with a miniature atom bomb. Closer to home, the president stages an explosive hoax to justify evacuating Washington, DC. But as zero hours approaches, Stark realizes that it might already be too...

Yankee Come Home explores one family's history in Cuba, and through it, the intense, complex, smoldering relationship between the island nation and its leviathan neighbor.In Cuba's most entrancing, storied landscape, William Craig is searching for a history that his family has lost-and now needs to recover. He's looking for the truth about his mysterious great-grandfather, Thomas O'Brien, a self-proclaimed hero of the "splendid little war" who left a legacy of glorious, painful lies. Living a dream that haunts American hearts-the dream of escaping the past, of becoming who we say we are-"Papa" died leaving his own children wondering who he'd really been.Along the way, Craig searches for the place where Gilded Age America abandoned republican ideals in favor of imperial ambition-and where his own generation of Americans now preside over arbitrary imprisonment and systematized torture. "I needed to see Guantánamo the way some Americans needed to drive through the...

Two madmen, Hitler and Stalin, engaged in a death struggle that would determine the course of history at staggering cost of human life. Craig has written the definitive book on one of the most terrible battles ever fought. With 24 pages of photos. The bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, Stalingrad was perhaps the single most important engagement of World War II. A major loss for the Axis powers, the battle for Stalingrad signaled the beginning of the end for the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. During the five years William Craig spent researching the battle for Stalingrad, he traveled extensively on three continents, studying documents and interviewing hundreds of survivors, both military and civilian. This unique account is their story, and the stories of the nearly two million men and women who lost their lives. Review FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem

Decades after the defeat of the Third Reich, the SS rears its sinister head in this captivating thriller from the bestselling author of Enemy at the Gates and TheFall of Japan In the chaos of defeat, while Germany's roads teemed with desperate refugees and jumbled armies, Hitler's inner circle tried to disappear. Heinrich Himmler donned an eye patch and posed as a farmer. Captured by British troops, he bit into a cyanide capsule concealed in a tooth cavity. Rudolph Hoess, former commandant of Auschwitz, was discovered working as a farmhand near Bremen. But many of the most notorious Nazis escaped, including Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann. Martin Bormann, the Fuehrer's private secretary, was rumored to be living everywhere from the Soviet Union to South America. Almost 3 decades later, CIA agent Matt Corcoran is sent to Bad Nauheim to investigate possible Soviet involvement in the theft of US Army munitions. He hears whispers of...