Andrew Roberts – författare

Medias rapporter om samtida krig spänner från anonyma cyberangrepp till machetebeväpnade miliser. I Konflikt (Conflict, 2023) ger den amerikanske generalen David Petraeus, tidigare överbefälhavare i Afghanistan och Irak, och den brittiske historikern professor Andrew Roberts en sammanfattande analys av världens krig och väpnade konflikter sedan andra världskriget. Teknik och taktisk förmåga är faktorer i deras framställning, men än mer betydande är ledares förmåga att urskilja det strategiskt viktiga, att formulera rimliga mål, att agera förnuftsmässigt och att inse betydelsen av faktorer som moralisk helgjutenhet, informationsövertag, vilseledning och politiska aspekter. Här återknyter författarna till Clausewitz konstaterande att krig är en fortsättning på politiken, men med andra medel.

Inte minst har författarnas analys bäring på kriget i Ukraina. Rysslands militära och politiska ledarskap har hittills brustit i praktiskt taget alla de förmågor och egenskaper som är avgörande, konstaterar Roberts och Petraeus.

General David Petraeus är en pensionerad amerikansk general och är för närvarande partner i ett ledande investeringsbolag samt ordförande i dess Global Institute. Han har tidigare tjänstgjort trettiosju år inom den amerikanska militären, tjänstgjort som chef för CIA och doktorerat vid Princeton University. Han är för närvarande seniorforskare och universitetslektor vid Yale University och är en framträdande kommentator när det gäller samtida säkerhetsfrågor, militära utvecklingar och internationella relationer.

Andrew Roberts är en internationellt välkänd biografiförfattare och historiker. Hans har skrivit ett flertal prisbelönade böcker, däribland Masters and Commanders (2009), The Storm of War (2011) och Leadership in War (2019) och Churchill: walking with destiny (2018). Roberts är för närvarande gästprofessor vid institutionen för krigsstudier vid King's College, London, samt Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow vid Hoover Institution vid Stanford University.

Two leading authorities—an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time—collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past—and anticipate in the future—in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world.

In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America. Conflict culminates with a bracing look at Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare. Filled with sharp insight and the wisdom of experience, Conflict is not only a critical assessment of our recent past, but also an essential primer of modern warfare that provides crucial knowledge for waging battle today as well as for understanding what the decades ahead will bring.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Brought to you by Penguin. Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors. Masterfully narrated by Stephen Thorne, this audiobook in no way conceals Churchill''s faults, and it allows the listener to appreciate his virtues and character in full: his titanic capacity for work (and drink), his ability see the big picture, his willingness to take risks and insistence on being where the action was, his good humour even in the most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of his friendships and his extraordinary propensity to burst into tears at unexpected moments. Above all, it shows us the wellsprings of his personality - his lifelong desire to please his father (even long after his father''s death) but aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present.During the Second World War, Churchill summoned a particular scientist to see him several times for technical advice. ''It was the same whenever we met'', wrote the young man. ''I had a feeling of being recharged by a source of living power.'' Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt''s emissary, wrote, ''Wherever he was, there was a battlefront.'' Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill''s essential partner in strategy and most severe critic in private, wrote in his diary, ''I thank God I was given such an opportunity of working alongside such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.''© Andrew Roberts 2018 (P) Penguin Audio 2018

Brought to you by Penguin. George III, Britain''s longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as ''the cruellest tyrant of this age'' (Thomas Paine, eighteenth century), ''a sovereign who inflicted more profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king'' (WEH Lecky, nineteenth century), ''one of England''s most disastrous kings'' (JH Plumb, twentieth century) and as the pompous, camp and sinister monarch of the musical ''Hamilton'' (twenty-first century).Andrew Roberts''s magnificent new biography takes entirely the opposite view. It convincingly portrays George as intelligent, benevolent, scrupulously devoted to the constitution of his country and (as head of government as well as head of state) navigating the turbulence of eighteenth-century politics with a strong sense of honour and duty. He was a devoted husband and family man, a great patron of the arts and sciences, keen (''Farmer George'') to advance Britain''s agricultural capacity and determined that her horizons should be global.The book gives a detailed, revisionist account of the American War of Independence, amongst other things persuasively taking apart a significant proportion of the Declaration of Independence. In a later war, it shows how George''s support for William Pitt was crucial to the battle against Napoleon. And it makes a credible, modern diagnosis of George''s terrible malady which robbed him of his mind for the last 10 years of his life - his other main claim to the popular imagination.Roberts argues that, far from being a tyrant or incompetent, George III was one of our most admirable monarchs. George III shows one of Britain''s premier historians at his sparkling best.© Andrew Roberts 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021