Sir Winston S. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."
Over a 64-year span, Churchill published over 40 books, many multi-volume definitive accounts of historical events to which he was a witness and participant. All are beautifully written and as accessible and relevant today as when first published.
During his fifty-year political career, Churchill served twice as Prime Minister in addition to other prominent positions—including President of the Board of Trade, First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. In the 1930s, Churchill was one of the first to recognize the danger of the rising Nazi power in Germany and to campaign for rearmament in Britain. His leadership and inspired broadcasts and speeches during World War II helped strengthen British resistance to Adolf Hitler—and played an important part in the Allies’ eventual triumph.
One of the most inspiring wartime leaders of modern history, Churchill was also an orator, a historian, a journalist, and an artist. All of these aspects of Churchill are fully represented in this collection of his works.
In 1903, Winston Churchill was at the cusp of a brilliant political career--a newly elected Parliament member with a brash, aggressive style of oration and passionate political convictions. During this time, John Brodrick, the Secretary of State for War, proposed an expansion of Britain's peacetime military--a plan which Churchill strongly opposed.
Churchill attacked Brodrick's plan in six fiery speeches on the subject--speeches that generated strong support and left Brodrick politically isolated. Mr. Brodrick's Army is a compilation of all six of these speeches. With fewer than 20 first editions currently in existence, it is the rarest of Churchill's works--remarkable not only for its historical significance, but for its early display of the oratorical brilliance for which Churchill would become known.
The first volume of Winston Churchill's six-volume memoirs as a statesman and leader during World War II, The Gathering Storm begins with his thoughts on World War I--and how its ending laid the foundations for the next global conflict. As a military and political leader during both wars, Churchill was well placed to give readers a behind-the-scenes tour of history as it was being created, by a man who had a definitive part in shaping it. The volume continues with contemporary letters and memoranda from the British government documenting the country's terrifying descent into war. As Prime Minister during World War II, Churchill possessed a unique understanding of these documents' connection to historical events--and guides the reader through them with vivid narrative skill.
The fifth and last volume of Churchill's five-volume series The World Crisis tells a gritty, true-to-life account of the Eastern Front-written by someone whose decisions had a profound impact on the success of war efforts both in the East and in the West. While the battle for modern civilization was being fought on the Western Front during World War I, an equally important war-with equally high stakes-was being fought on the Eastern Front, between Russia, Germany, and Germany's Austrian allies. It's rare that a historical account of World War I documents in as much detail the events of the Eastern Front as those of the West. Churchill's account was one of the first to do so, telling the story of an armed conflict that was shockingly dissimilar from its counterpart in the West.
