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.
This second volume in Churchill's five-volume series The World Crisis is by far the most personal-dealing frankly with Churchill's failures as a military leader and his ultimately unsuccessful battle to break the European deadlock. After the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles, Winston Churchill served for several months as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. During this time, he served on one of the most violent stretches of the front lines, making a total of 36 courageous expeditions into No Man's Land. Here, Churchill provides an unflinching narrative of a particularly challenging time in World War I and in his own career-providing fascinating insight into the mental and psychological challenges faced by a major historical leader.
In this third volume of a six-volume series, Winston Churchill draws upon thousands of personal memoranda, war correspondence, and internal government memos to describe the full entry of the US into World War II--adding considerable strength to British military operations and morale. While America had contributed to the British war effort before, primarily through the "Lend-Lease" program providing material support to Britain and later to Russia, it was Churchill who finally persuaded an isolationist US Congress to fully join the cause. This account not only documents historical events with thrilling immediacy--it also gives intimate insight into Churchill's state of mind as a military leader. With the US on Britain's side, Churchill's certainty of success stayed with him throughout the war--and made him the indomitable leader history remembers.
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.
