The spectre of the Great War still haunts us. No other conflict so dramatically illustrates the waste of life, and the slaughter of innocents, as that of 1914-18. And none has so dramatically shaped the modern world: the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the break-up of Empire, the supremacy of America and World War II all stem from the four years of the 'war to end all wars'. Here is the eye-witness chronicle of that war, from the trenches of Flanders to the staff rooms of the Imperial Germany Army, from T. E. Lawrence in the desert to the 'Red Baron' in the air, from Land Girls in England to German U-boat crews in the Atlantic, it leaves nothing out. And if all the horror of the war fought by the Tommies in the trenches is captured, so too are the machinations of the 'top brass' and politicians.

Hear the cannon roar at Valley Forge with George Washington, dance the night away at a Chicago Speakeasy during Prohibition, take a ringside seat for the gunfight at the OK Corral, ride Apollo 11 to the moon, hear Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, join with Harry S. Truman on the A-bomb deliberations, land with John Smith at Virginia, ride against Custer at Little Horn, get on down to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, march to 'The Grapes of Wrath' at Shiloh, work your fingers to the bone at Henry Ford's car plant . . . this is America - the beautiful, the powerful, the tragic, the glorious. The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: America is the story of the making of America in the very words of those who were there, from its 'discovery' by Christopher Columbus to George W. Bush's War Against Terrorism. Composed of firsthand eye-witness accounts of the seminal moments in US history, this is an intimate, revealing, insightful guide to the greatest nation on earth. In five chronological sections, this volume tracks the main phases of American history: Discovery, including the exploration and settlement of America; Independence, the Revolution and wars against British rule; Destiny, covering expansion into the West and the split between North and South; Frontier, including the settlement of the American West and the Indian Wars; and finally Century, the 100 years that saw America becoming a superpower on the world's political stage.

This collection of first-hand experiences from the whole of history enables the reader to relive some of the world's greatest moments. Writers from Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch, to Tom Wolfe, Primo Levi, Lillian Hellman, and Ernest Hemingway cover great tragedies from Pompeii to the Titanic, the shattering horrors of war through the ages, sensational crimes and uprisings, and assassinations from Caesar to JFK.

This is the entire story of the Third Reich at war, covering all the Wehrmacht's major battles and campaigns of World War II, among them Barbarossa, Stalingrad, the Battle of the Bulge, the bitter fighting for Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean, and the final retreat to Berlin.

The Great War haunts the world still. It slaughtered a generation of young men; claimed limbs, wounded souls; drenched battlefields in blood; made sad legends of the Western Front, Gallipoli, and Jutland, and made heroes of poets; farmers, and factory workers. Clerks it made into Tommies, doughboys, or the Hun. And in this new Mammoth volume the voices of such eyewitnesses to history as these are heard again. So are the words of generals, statesmen, and kings. From the trenches in Flanders to the staff rooms of the Imperial German Army, with the Land Girls in England and U-boat crews in the Atlantic, alongside T. E. Lawrence in Arabia's desert and the Red Baron in the air—with a variety of extracts from letters, speeches, memoirs, diaries, and dispatches, this gripping collection covers each year and every facet of World War I. Among its wide range of witnesses are King George V, Robert Graves, Leon Trotsky, Erwin Rommel, Ernst Junger, Ernest Hemingway, American aviator Eddie Rickenbacker; and Winston S. Churchill. The pieces in this volume compose a stirring human drama of the conflict that redrew the map of the modern world and determined the political course of the twentieth century.

In his account of World War II, historian Jon Lewis has selected 300 first-hand accounts, from Heinz Guderian rolling his panzer tank into Poland to VJ Day in London and New York. More than a eyewitness chronicle, this collection gives the reader an insight into how the repercussions from the war shaped our modern world, and how nothing from geo-politics to rock 'n' roll can really be understood without considering it.