Ilya Grinberg – författare

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

A groundbreaking account of the Soviet Air Force in World War II, the original version of this book, Red Phoenix, was hailed by the Washington Post as both “brilliant” and “monumental.” That version has now been completely overhauled in the wake of an avalanche of declassified Russian archival sources, combat documents, and statistical information made available in the past three decades. The result, Red Phoenix Rising, is nothing less than definitive.

The saga of the Soviet air force, one of the least chronicled aspects of the war, marked a transition from near annihilation in 1941 to the world’s largest operational-tactical air force four years later. Von Hardesty and Ilya Grinberg reveal the dynamic changes in tactics and operational art that allowed the VVS to bring about that remarkable transformation. Drawing upon a wider array of primary sources, well beyond the uncritical and ultra-patriotic Soviet memoirs underpinning the original version, this volume corrects, updates, and amplifies its predecessor. In the process, it challenges many “official” accounts and revises misconceptions promoted by scholars who relied heavily on German sources, thus enlarging our understanding of the brutal campaigns fought on the Eastern Front.

The authors describe the air campaigns as they unfolded, with full chapters devoted to the monumental victories at Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk. By combining the deeply affecting human drama of pilots, relentlessly confronted by lethal threats in the air and on the ground, with a rich technical understanding of complex military machines, they have produced a fast-paced, riveting look at the air war on the Eastern Front as it has never been seen before. They also address dilemmas faced by the Soviet Air Force in the immediate postwar era as it moved to adopt the new technology of long-range bombers, jet propulsion and nuclear arms.

Drawing heavily upon individual accounts down to the unit level, Hardesty and Grinberg greatly enhance our understanding of their story’s human dimension, while the book''s more than 100 photos, many never before seen in the West, vividly portray the high stakes and hardware of this dramatic tale. In sum, this is the definitive one-volume account of a vital but still underserved dimension of the war—surpassing its predecessor so decisively that no fan of that earlier work can afford to miss it.

Due to the structural and functional flexibility and complexity of ferroelectrics, the fundamental science and applications of this material family is continuously evolving. This reference text covers the most significant advances in the field of ferroelectrics over the past decade. The fundamental aspects describe studies based on first-principles calculations, multiscale simulation and ferroelectric models adapted from ferromagnetic counterparts. The experimental aspects describe advanced ferroelectric ceramics made from band-gap-engineered compositions pioneered in emerging multi-sensing and energy harvesting applications, topological defects in ferroelectrics for nanoelectronics, and the emergence of ferroelectricity in halide perovskites. The book links fundamental science to experiments and applications, which is urgently needed by ferroelectrics researchers who must gain knowledge in both aspects. Readers will uncover the latest verified research results and conclusions reached by well-known, pioneering and leading scientists in each of the topics.

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