Alex Kershaw – författare

A full-blooded, pacy biography of one of the most charismatic writers of the century, whose life and work were to inspire Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac and Mailer. ‘We cannot help but read on’: TLS. ‘The energy, dynamism and sheer bursting life-force of Jack London bowls you over’: Scotsman. Jack London’s life story (1876–1916) is as dramatic as any of the fiction he wrote. Born illegitimate in San Francisco, he was (in his teens) an oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer – and spectacular drinker.On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he became the most highly publicised writer in the world. Subsequent books, including Martin Eden, White Fang, The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, John Barleycorn, The Sea Wolf, continue in print as world classics in many languages.Apart from writing 50 books, he lectured for the Socialist Party in America; was a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing to the West Coast; sailed the seven seas in his yacht, the Snark…

A full-blooded, pacy biography of one of the most charismatic writers of the century, whose life and work were to inspire Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac and Mailer. `We cannot help but read on’: TLS. `The energy, dynamism and sheer bursting life-force of Jack London bowls you over’: Scotsman.• Jack London’s life story (1876–1916) is as dramatic as any of the fiction he wrote. Born illegitimate in San Francisco, he was (in his teens) an oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer – and spectacular drinker.• On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he became the most highly publicised writer in the world. Subsequent books, including Martin Eden, White Fang, The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, John Barleycorn, The Sea Wolf, continue in print as world classics in many languages.• Apart from writing 50 books, he lectured for the Socialist Party in America; was a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing to the West Coast; sailed the seven seas in his yacht, the Snark.

_______________________The true story behind the hit NETFLIX dramaFrom the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau, no World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the one commanded by Felix Sparks.The US Army 157th regiment, known as the Thunderbirds, drew many of its men from more than fifty different Native American tribes, mixed in with Mexican-Americans and men more used to herding cattle in the American southwest. Felix Sparks, tasked with leading the diverse regiment regarded by generals as one of the US's finest fighting forces, was a maverick officer, and the only man to survive his company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end.Here, his remarkable true story is told for the first time, along with those of the men who bravely fought alongside him._______________________'Exceptional....The Liberator balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers' Wall Street Journal'A revealing portrait of a man who led by example and suffered a deep emotional wound with the loss of each soldier under his command ... The Liberator is a worthwhile and fast-paced examination of a dedicated officer navigating - and somehow surviving - World War II.' Washington Post'A history of the American war experience in miniature, from the hard-charging enthusiasm of the initial landings to the clear-eyed horror of the liberation of the concentration camps.' The Daily Beast'Kershaw has ensured that individuals and entire battles that might have been lost to history, or overshadowed by more 'important' people and events, have their own place in the vast, protean tale of World War II ... Where Kershaw succeeds, and where The Liberator is at its most riveting and satisfying, is in its delineation of Felix Sparks as a good man that other men would follow into Hell - and in its unblinking, matter-of-fact description, in battle after battle, of just how gruesome, terrifying and dehumanizing that Hell could be.' Time

A cold winter morning in the Ardennes Forest, 1944, and Hitler launches his last and most audacious attack on the unprepared Allies. Standing between the German forces and the desperately regrouping Allies were just eighteen young Americans, hidden in fox holes.In a fierce day-long battle, this small band of soldiers repulsed the German attack three times, inflicting severe casualties and defending a strategically vital hill despite being vastly outnumbered. They surrendered only when they ran out of ammunition. But then the real battle for survival began ...Alex Kershaw's brilliant account draws on the words of the decorated men who fought this heroic action, bringing vividly to life their struggle on the battlefield and later off it - as POWs.

In the early days of World War Two when Britain stood alone against the terror of Hitler's all-conquering Third Reich, her future hung in the balance; her defence in the hands of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command. They were Churchill's Few. In defiance of their own country's strict neutrality laws, a handful of American adventurers flew with them. This is their story - and a fresh perspective on the greatest air battle the world has ever seen.

June 6, 1944: Nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginia- population just 3,000 in 1944- died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day. They were part of Company A of the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division, and the first wave of American soldiers to hit the beaches in Normandy. Later in the campaign, three more boys from this small Virginia town died of gunshot wounds. Twenty-two sons of Bedford lost- it is a story one cannot easily forget and one that the families of Bedford will never forget. The Bedford Boys is the true and intimate story of these men and the friends and families they left behind.Based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives, as well as diaries and letters, Kershaw's book focuses on several remarkable individuals and families to tell one of the most poignant stories of World War II- the story of one small American town that went to war and died on Omaha Beach.

Robert Capa, one of the finest photojournalists and combat photographers of the twentieth century, covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the early conflict in Vietnam. Always close to the action, he created some of the most enduring images ever made with a camera- perhaps none more memorable than the gritty photos taken on the morning of D-Day.But the drama of Capa's life wasn't limited to one side of the lens. Born in Budapest as Andre Freidman, Capa fled political repression and anti-Semitism as a teenager by escaping to Berlin, where he first picked up a Leica camera. He founded Magnum, which today remains the most prestigious photographic agency of its kind. He was a gambler and seducer of several of his era's most alluring icons, including Ingrid Bergman, and his friends included Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and John Huston.From Budapest in the twenties to Paris in the thirties, from postwar Hollywood to Stalin's Russia, from New York to Indochina, Blood and Champagne is a wonderfully evocative account of Capa's life and times.

On the morning of December 16, 1944, eighteen men of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon attached to the 99th Infantry Division found themselves directly in the path of the main thrust of Hitler's massive Ardennes offensive. Despite being vastly outnumbered, they were told to hold their position "at all costs." Throughout the day, the platoon repulsed three large German assaults in a fierce day-long battle, killing hundreds of German soldiers. Only when they had run out of ammunition did they surrender to the enemy. But their long winter was just beginning. As POWs, the platoon experienced an ordeal far worse than combat-surviving in wretched German POW camps. Yet miraculously the men of the platoon survived-all of them-and returned home after the war. More than thirty years later, when President Carter recognized the platoon's "extraordinary heroism" and the U.S. Army approved combat medals for all eighteen men, they became America's most decorated platoon of World War II. With the same vivid and dramatic prose that made The Bedford Boys a national bestseller, Alex Kershaw brings to life the story of these little-known heroes-an epic tale of courage, duty, and survival in World War II and one of the most inspiring episodes in American history. The Longest Winter is an intensely human story about young men who find themselves in frightening wartime situations, who fight back instinctively, survive stoically, and live heroically.

The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of eight young Americans who joined Britain's Royal Air Force, defying their country's neutrality laws and risking their U.S. citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots in the summer of 1940-over a year before America entered the war. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" and with minimal training but plenty of guts, they dueled the skilled and fearsome pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe. By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. Winston Churchill once said of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." These daring Americans were the few among the "few." Now, with the narrative drive and human drama that made The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter national bestsellers, Alex Kershaw tells their story for the first time.

In the early morning hours of October 24, 1944, the legendary U.S. Navy submarine Tang was hit by one of its own faulty torpedoes. The survivors of the explosion struggled to stay alive one hundred-eighty feet beneath the surface, while the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges. As the air ran out, some of the crew made a daring ascent through the escape hatch. In the end, just nine of the original eighty-man crew survived. But the survivors were beginning a far greater ordeal. After being picked up by the Japanese, they were sent to an interrogation camp known as the Torture Farm." When they were liberated in 1945, they were close to death, but they had revealed nothing to the Japanese, including the greatest secret of World War II. With the same heart-pounding narrative drive that made The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter national bestsellers, Alex Kershaw brings to life this incredible story of survival and endurance.

In July 1944, thirty-two-year-old Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest on a mission to rescue the last Jews of Europe.Over the next six months, he repeatedly risked his life to save tens of thousands of Jews, defying mass murderer Adolf Eichmann and crazed Hungarian fascists while enduring one of the bloodiest sieges of World War II. Tragically, when Budapest was finally liberated, the Holocaust's greatest hero had disappeared into the Soviet gulag to this day, his exact fate is unknown.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Liberator and Avenue of Spies returns with a thrilling, action-heavy account of D-Day combat.Beginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows ten men attempting to carry out D-Day''s most critical missions. Their actions would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler''s Fortress Europe. The ten make a charismatic, unforgettable cast. They include the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the only British soldier that day to earn a Victoria Cross; the Canadian brothers who led their decimated troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; the colonel who faced the powerful 150-mm guns of the Merville Battery; as well as a French commando who helped destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach. This book will give authentic voice to the invaders'' enemies—the German-enlisted men and officers tasked with destroying the Allies as they hit the beaches.The result is an utterly immersive, adrenaline-driven drama, an epic of close combat and extraordinary heroism. It is the capstone Alex Kershaw''s remarkable career, built on his close friendships with D-Day survivors and his intimate understanding of the Normandy battlefield. For the seventy-fifth anniversary, here is a fresh take on World War II''s longest day.

The best-selling author of The Liberator brings to life the incredible true story of an American doctor in Paris, and his heroic espionage efforts during World War IIThe leafy Avenue Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris''s hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son Phillip at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high. Just down the road at Number 31 was the "mad sadist" Theodor Dannecker, an Eichmann protégé charged with deporting French Jews to concentration camps. And Number 84 housed the Parisian headquarters of the Gestapo, run by the most effective spy hunter in Nazi Germany. From his office at the American Hospital, itself an epicenter of Allied and Axis intrigue, Jackson smuggled fallen Allied fighter pilots safely out of France, a job complicated by the hospital director''s close ties to collaborationist Vichy. After witnessing the brutal round-up of his Jewish friends, Jackson invited Liberation to officially operate out of his home at Number 11--but the noose soon began to tighten. When his secret life was discovered by his Nazi neighbors, he and his family were forced to undertake  a journey into the dark heart of the war-torn continent from which there was little chance of return.Drawing upon a wealth of primary source material and extensive interviews with Phillip Jackson, Alex Kershaw recreates the City of Light during its darkest days. The untold story of the Jackson family anchors the suspenseful narrative, and Kershaw dazzles readers with the vivid immediacy of the best spy thrillers. Awash with the tense atmosphere of World War II''s Europe, Avenue of Spies introduces us to the brave doctor who risked everything to defy Hitler.From the Hardcover edition.

In the summer of 1940 a handful of volunteer pilots defied their country to fight when we needed them most. This is the story of their Battle of Britain.In the early days of World War Two when Britain stood alone against the terror of Hitler's all-conquering Third Reich, her future hung in the balance; her defence in the hands of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command. They were Churchill's Few. This is their story - and a fresh perspective on the greatest air battle the world has ever seen.'Fine, deeply movingm scintillating...in the battle scenes this book soars heavenward like one of the Spitfires.' - Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph

New York Times bestselling author Alex Kershaw has written the first full biography of one of the most remarkable men to have outwitted Hitler - Raoul Wallenberg, the young Swedish diplomat who almost single-handedly saved the lives of countless Hungarian Jews, at unimaginable risk and great cost to himself. As a Holocaust survivor said, 'Schindler saved hundreds. Wallenberg saved tens of thousands.' This is the story of how he achieved this and of his personal duel with Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel charged with obliterating Hungarian Jewry, who sent half a million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz. This confrontation reaches its climax in 1944 when Soviet and German troops are fighting hand-to-hand through the suburbs of Budapest and Eichmann's push for the Final Solution is personally opposed by Wallenberg. The book also sheds new light on Wallenberg's fate - he disappeared into the Soviet Union after the war to a highly controversial and disputed death. (The Americans were so determined to discover what happened to him that they made him an honorary citizen in order to prise information out of the Russians.) It's an inspiring story which moves at the pace of a master thriller-writer, but the truth behind it is heartbreaking.

_______________________The true story behind the hit NETFLIX dramaFrom the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau, no World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the one commanded by Felix Sparks.The US Army 157th regiment, known as the Thunderbirds, drew many of its men from more than fifty different Native American tribes, mixed in with Mexican-Americans and men more used to herding cattle in the American southwest. Felix Sparks, tasked with leading the diverse regiment regarded by generals as one of the US's finest fighting forces, was a maverick officer, and the only man to survive his company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end.Here, his remarkable true story is told for the first time, along with those of the men who bravely fought alongside him._______________________'Exceptional....The Liberator balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers' Wall Street Journal'A revealing portrait of a man who led by example and suffered a deep emotional wound with the loss of each soldier under his command ... The Liberator is a worthwhile and fast-paced examination of a dedicated officer navigating - and somehow surviving - World War II.' Washington Post'A history of the American war experience in miniature, from the hard-charging enthusiasm of the initial landings to the clear-eyed horror of the liberation of the concentration camps.' The Daily Beast'Kershaw has ensured that individuals and entire battles that might have been lost to history, or overshadowed by more 'important' people and events, have their own place in the vast, protean tale of World War II ... Where Kershaw succeeds, and where The Liberator is at its most riveting and satisfying, is in its delineation of Felix Sparks as a good man that other men would follow into Hell - and in its unblinking, matter-of-fact description, in battle after battle, of just how gruesome, terrifying and dehumanizing that Hell could be.' Time

A wonderfully rich and evocative biography of the great war photographer, Robert Capa, whose life was every bit as dramatic as the pictures he took.A Hungarian, Capa was driven from his country by political oppression and became the greatest war photographer of his generation with his work during the Spanish Civil War. His work during WWII made him a legend as he covered many of the significant moments of the war, crossing the Atlantic with the first convoys, enduring the London Blitz and following the Allies through North Africa, Italy and then the liberation of France. Founder of Magnum, he was one of the earliest casualties of what would become the Vietnam war, being killed in IndoChina in 1954. Friend of Hemingway, Gary Cooper, Gene Kelly, John Huston, lover of Ingrid Bergman, he is one of the great figures of the twentieth century.'A tale rich with intrigue, love, lust, lies and betrayal...I loved this book' Janine di Giovanni'Ambition, integrity and courage were intertwined in Capa, as Alex Kershaw persuades in this elegant biography ...a spellbinding portrait of his gypsy life.' Sunday Times'Packed with good stories, and snappily written, Blood and Champagne is as full of life as the man it celebrates.' Observer'Remarkably fine' Daily Telegraph

'History’s greatest story reinvigorated as only Alex Kershaw can' —Adam Makos, New York Times bestselling author of A Higher Call'An absolute triumph' —James M. Scott, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and national bestselling author of Target Tokyo and Rampage'The unforgettable human drama of history's most consequential invasion' —John C. McManus, author of The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day—The Big Red One at Omaha Beach Beginning in the pre-dawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows ten men attempting to carry out D-Day's most critical missions. Their actions would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe.  The ten make a charismatic, unforgettable cast. They include the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the only British soldier that day to earn a Victoria's Cross; the Canadian brothers who led their decimated troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; the colonel who faced the powerful 150mm guns of the Merville Battery; as well as a French commando who helped destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach. The book will give authentic voice to the invaders' enemies, the German enlisted men and officers tasked with destroying the Allies as they hit the beaches. The result is an utterly immersive, adrenaline-driven drama, an epic of close combat and extraordinary heroism. It is the capstone Alex Kershaw's remarkable career, built on his close friendships with D-Day survivors and his intimate understanding of the Normandy battlefield. For the seventy-fifth anniversary, here is a fresh take on the Second World War's longest day.Praise for Alex Kershaw: ‘From the opening pages, when Kershaw...drops us into the invasion of Paris, we know that we are in good hands. This is classic narrative nonfiction, constructed and written like a thriller.’ Chicago Tribune ‘Exceptional.... balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers.’ Wall Street Journal ‘Kershaw's writing is seamless. He incorporates information from a vast array of sources, but it works--you get a sense of the different voices coming into the story....A gripping read.’ Minneapolis Star Tribune