Peter joined the R.A.F. in 1938 on a short-service commission and was despatched to France when war broke out. After serving with legendary fighter ace Douglas Bader, Peter was posted to North Africa in 1942, where he was forced to crash-land his Hurricane in a minefield. He flew Spitfires on intruder sorties over France before and during D-Day, on bomber escort duty against V-weapons sites and in support of mass daylight raids deep into Germany. Awarded the D.F.C. in Dece...

Designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses, Research from the Inside Out is an insider's guide to conducting empirically-based research. Showcasing eight research projects resulting in academic and professional papers, this practical supplementary text is an indispensable resource for those intending to further their academic studies in communication or other related social science disciplines.In the text, Thomas Hugh Feeley guides students as he "looks under...

From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain’s early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas’s magisterial narrative of Spain in the New World has all the characteristics of great historical literature: amazing discoveries, ambition, greed, religious fanaticism, court intrigue, and a battle for the soul of humankind.Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. He...

First serious examination of the curious demise of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that also investigates an extraordinary web of secret deals and international intrigue.On 23 May 1945 Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and architect of the Holocaust, committed suicide in Allied custody. So why was MI6's most talented secret agent Kim Philby unconvinced by the story of Himmler's suicide?Hugh Thomas set out to answer Philby's question and has uncovered a maze of corruption,...

Innovation has shaped society since civilization began. Imperial China was the most innovative society on earth, but it failed to join the 19th century industrial revolution. In the 20th century, the Communist Party of China addressed that failure. Today China boasts an internationally compliant, rapidly developing IP system. State planning continues to be critical as the case of the largest, single, technology acquisition and infrastructure project in world history, high speed rail, demon...

Drawing on the patterns of words, speech, and identity we encounter in the wider world—subway ads in Mexico City, a Dutch-Japanese phrase book, multilingual airplane safety instructions, one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities—the poems in Hugh Thomas’s Maze playfully (mis)translate the maze of languages and language into moments of amazement.

January 1984 marked the 25th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s emergence to power. The Cuban Revolution: 25 Years Later is a product of the CSIS Cuba Project, a long-term effort to focus public as well as policymaker’s attention on Cuba-related affairs. The lead author, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, is the dean of political-historical studies on Cuba, and author of the encyclopedic Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. A great deal of myth surrounds the evolution of Cuba since Castro’s ...

The charm of Madrid is elusive, but for those who know how to find it, Madrid has magic. Its magic can be found in the shadow cast over the present by the past. In this Traveller's Reader, a city that was once the seat of power for perhaps the most ambitious political enterprise the western world had seen since the fall of Rome, the Spanish Empire, is brought to life in vivid diaries, letters, memoirs and histories.The Earl of Clarendon describes seventeenth-century bullfights; Sal...

Following Rivers of Gold and The Golden Empire andbuilding on five centuries of scholarship, World Without End is the epic conclusion of an unprecedented three-volume history of the Spanish Empire from “one of the most productive and wide-ranging historians of modern times” (The New York Times Book Review).The legacy of imperial Spain was shaped by many hands. But the dramatic human story of the extraordinary projection of Spanis...

From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes a magnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, when Spain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written a rich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder. At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French and expanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who were his agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a gangly and easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesm...

When Matthew Lewis’s The Monk was published in 1796, readers were shocked by this gripping and horrific novel. Lewis’s story, which drove the House of Commons—of which he was a member—to deem him licentious and perverse, follows the abbot Ambrosio as he is tempted into a world of incest, murder, and torture by a young girl who has concealed herself in his monastery disguised as a boy. As Ambrosio spirals into hell, the reader encounters an array of haunting characters: the innocen...

'The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love - only for their fear.'- Heinrich HimmlerThe Schutzstaffel, or SS - the brutal elite of the Nazi Party - was founded by Hitler in 1925 to be his personal bodyguard. From 1929 it was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built its numbers up from under 300 to well over a million by 1945 as the SS grew to be the backbone of Nazi Germany, ta...