Stanley Weintraub

SILENT NIGHT brings to life one of the most unlikely and touching events in the annals of war. In the early months of WWI, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides left their trenches, laid down their arms, and joined in a spontaneous celebration with their new friends, the enemy. For a brief, blissful time, remembered since in song and story, a world war stopped. Even the participants found what they were doing incredible. Germans placed candle-lit Christmas trees on trench parapets and warring soldiers sang carols. In the spirit of the season they ventured out beyond their barbed wire to meet in No Man's Land, where they buried the dead in moving ceremonies, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together, and joyously played football, often with improvised balls. The truce spread as men defied orders and fired harmlessly into the air. But, reluctantly, they were forced to re-start history's most bloody war. SILENT NIGHT vividly recovers a dreamlike event, one of the most extraordinary of Christmas stories.

The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914

Silent Night

A major biography of Queen Victoria--the first complete life of her in over twenty years--and the first to be written by an American. Illustrated.

An Intimate Biography

Victoria

An account of the 1944 Battle of the Bulge between Allied forces and Hitler's surviving army describes how Germany surprised Eisenhower's generals by breaking through Allied lines in the Ardennes Forest, sparking a brutal ten-day conflict that proved pivotal to the war's outcome. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Christmas at the Bulge, 1944

11 Days in December

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations (Signet Classics)

A Victorian Biography

Four Rossettis

The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce

eine Biographie

Queen Victoria

Stanley Weintraub, biographer of Victoria and other major figures of her era, here unveils for the first time the largely hidden role of Albert, establishing him as one of the greatest men of his days. Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Weintraub delves into Albert's political, familial, financial, medical, and sexual life. As a youth, Albert had few choices of vocation. Plucked from foreign obscurity - literally a "student prince" - he would sire the succession in what was then the most powerful empire on earth. His marriage, arranged as it was and stormy at times, remains one of the most surprising and arresting of love stories. Yet while Victoria adored him, his adopted people never accepted him, nor were they pleased with his behind-the-scenes behavior as surrogate sovereign. He was active, often secretly, in foreign affairs and in military affairs. He played a major part in running the Crimean War, and early in the American Civil War played a major part in keeping Britain from intervening for the South. He was Britain's leading exponent of industrial and technological progress, culminating in the renowned Crystal Palace exhibition, the first - and most successful - World's Fair. Indeed, virtually all royal instructions from the Queen to her officials, were drafted by the Prince Consort.

The Life of Prince Albert

Uncrowned King

Covers momentous events in the last month of World War II, from July 15 to August 15, 1945, interwoven with personal experiences.

The End of World War II, July/August 1945

The Last Great Victory

A Study in Personality and Ideas

Disraeli

British Dramatists Since World War II: M-Z

On Christmas Eve in the early years of World War I, men on both sides left their trenches, laid down their arms and joined in a spontaneous celebration. For a brief time the war stopped, the enemies met in no-man's land and buried their dead, exchanged gifts and even played football together. The stories of men who were there illuminate the fragile truce, and highlight the happenings that occured as the truce spread. It also tells of the reluctant truth, that they had to re-start one of history's most bloody wars.

Describes the spontaneous celebration that occurred in the trenches on Christmas Eve in 1914 during World War I, when participants on both sides briefly put aside their differences to exchange gifts, share food, and enjoy a brief moment of peace.

Christmas 1941 came little more than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The shock -- in some cases overseas, elation -- was worldwide. While Americans attempted to go about celebrating as usual, the reality of the just-declared war was on everybody's mind. United States troops on Wake Island were battling a Japanese landing force and, in the Philippines, losing the fight to save Luzon. In Japan, the Pearl Harbor strike force returned to Hiroshima Bay and toasted its sweeping success. Across the Atlantic, much of Europe was frozen in grim Nazi occupation. Just three days before Christmas, Churchill surprised Roosevelt with an unprecedented trip to Washington, where they jointly lit the White House Christmas tree. As the two Allied leaders met to map out a winning wartime strategy, the most remarkable Christmas of the century played out across the globe. Pearl Harbor Christmas is a deeply moving and inspiring story about what it was like to live through a holiday season few would ever forget.

A World at War, December 1941

Pearl Harbor Christmas

"From an acclaimed historian, the dramatic story of the Christmas escape of thousands of American troops overwhelmingly surrounded by the enemy in Korea's harsh terrain. Just before Thanksgiving in 1950, five months into the Korean War, General MacArthur flew to American positions in the north and grandly announced an 'end-the-war-by-Christmas' offensive despite recent intervention by Mao's Chinese, who would soon trap tens of thousands of US troops poised toward the Yalu River border. Led by Marines, an overwhelmed X Corps evacuated the frigid, mountainous Chosin Reservoir fastness and fought a swarming enemy and treacherous snow and ice to reach the coast. Weather, terrain, Chinese firepower, and a 4,000-foot chasm made escape seem impossible in the face of a vanishing Christmas. But endurance and sacrifice prevailed, and the last troop ships weighed anchor on Christmas Eve. In the tradition of his Silent Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas, Stanley Weintraub presents another gripping narrative of a wartime Christmas season"--

an epic tale of courage and survival during the Korean War

A Christmas far from home

Presents a global analysis of the twenty-four hours that thrust the United States into World War II, featuring interviews with survivors and a detailed countdown of events that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941

Long Day's Journey Into War

Chronicles Disraeli's brilliant and varied career, set against the backdrop of the British Empire at its height

A Biography

America fought to gain independence from British colonial power between 1763 and 1783. It wasn't just a battle won by American revolutionaries. It was also lost by the British. Combining fascinating scenes of dissent in domestic British politics with graphic descriptions of the war in America, Weintraub's narrative is a page-turning story of military and political misfortune. As George Washington managed to hold his ragged and overmatched Continental army together and create a nation, his opponents -- principally King George III and his prime minister, Lord North -- themselves faced increasing resistance to the war's brutality and costs. Their opponents in Parliament and the press gradually turned pacifist and sympathetic to the Americans, and were unwilling to bear the costs of the Empire in America. As the tide turned on the battlefield, the 'iron tears' of muskets and cannon shed by the redcoats were matched by tearful protests in London. Although King George threatened to abdicate in frustration, many British merchants, voters, and politicians supported the cause of the new American nation, and were inspired by the leadership of Washington. Stanley Weintraub's masterful and eye-opening new history of the American War of Independence is the first ever written from a trans-Atlantic perspective.

Rebellion in America, 1775-1783

Iron Tears

When the wartime 1944 presidential election campaign geared up late that spring, Franklin D. Roosevelt had already occupied the White House years longer than any other president. Sensing likely weakness, the Republicans mounted an energetic and expensive campaign, hitting hard at FDR's liberal domestic policies and the war's ongoing cost. Despite gravely deteriorating health, FDR and his feisty running mate, the unexpected Harry Truman, campaigned vigorously against young governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and old-line Ohio governor John Bricker. Roosevelt's charm and wit, as well as the military successes in Europe and the Pacific, contributed to his sweeping electoral victory. But the hard-fought campaign would soon take its toll on America's only four-term president. Preeminent historian and biographer Stanley Weintraub recaptures FDR's striking “last campaign” and the year's momentous events, from the rainy city streets where Roosevelt, his legs paralyzed by polio since 1922, rode in an open car, to the battlefronts where the commander-in-chief's forces were closing in on Hitler and Hirohito. The tale is unforgettable.

Stanley Weintraub

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