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Fighting Men of World War II: Axis Forces is the first part of a two-volume set (Allied Forces is also available) which sets out to examine in detail the weapons and equipment of the average soldier of Germany, Japan, Italy, and the other nations like Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, comprised the Axis forces. In these pages we examine a broad range of general equipment that was used every day, including binoculars, goggles, radios, water bottles, fuel cans, medical kits, skis, wire cutters and detonators. We give detailed specifications of weapons such as pistols and revolvers, rifles, bayonets, fighting knives, hand grenades, landmines, flamethrowers, mortars and light artillery. The clothing sections include headgear, from the feathered hats of the Italian Bersaglieri sharpshooters to the redoubtable Stahlheim of the German troops. We examine footwear as diverse as polished officers’ shoes, cavalry boots, paratroopers’ jump boots and Japanese Tabi canvas shoes. Uniform tunics, shirts, trousers and greatcoats all receive attention, as do all-weather gear, gloves, ponchos and shelter sections, such as the German Zeltbahn. Camouflage variations are shown, as are rank badges together with unit badges and medals. Personal items too are included. We show cigarettes and lighters, letters and postcards home, campstools, fans, identity tags, mending kits and eating utensils. Almost all the items shown have not been featured in book form before and have been specially chosen from museums and private collections to form a unique reference source for the general reader, budding collector, military enthusiast, re-enactor, and modeller. The fighting man is placed within the context of his unit organization, while carefully researched archive photos show him with his weapons and equipment in action. The text, by seasoned military expert David Miller, is the result of painstaking research, backed up by his own military experience in the British Army, which has given him the necessary credentials to understand what the average fighting man’s needs and day-to-day preoccupations actually were. David has been assisted by editor Graham Smith, and the two of them have pulled together all these diverse elements to form one of the most definitive works of its kind.

Named Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, TLS, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail and Scotland on Sunday, Ian Kershaw's The End is a searing account of the final months of Nazi Germany, laying bare the fear and fanaticism that drove a nation to destruction.In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality.Just what made Germany keep on fighting?Why did its rulers not cut a deal to save their own skins?And why did ordinary people continue to obey the Fuhrer's suicidal orders, with countless Germans executing their own countrymen for desertion or defeatism?'Nuanced and sophisticated ... undoubtedly a masterpiece' - Mail on Sunday'Gripping yet scholarly ... the best attempt by far to answer the complex question of why Nazi Germany carried on fighting to total self-destruction' - Antony Beevor, Telegraph'Masterly ... Kershaw's gripping and boldly intelligent work of scholarship ... will surely become the standard account of the Nazi system's terrible final phase' - Financial Times'Brilliant ... utterly terrifying' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year

A rich and compelling account of the life of King Harald Hardrada, the man who inspired the hit Netflix show "Vikings: Valhalla".'The Last Viking reads like the sagas on which it is based. It's Beowulf on steroids, laced with purple prose...This book is great fun. '- Gerard DeGroot, The TimesHarald Sigurdsson burst into history as a teenaged youth in a Viking battle from which he escaped with little more than his life and a thirst for vengeance. But from these humble origins, he became one of Norway’s most legendary kings. The Last Viking is a fast-moving narrative account of the life of King Harald Hardrada, as he journeyed across the medieval world, from the frozen wastelands of the North to the glittering towers of Byzantium and the passions of the Holy Land, until his warrior death on the battlefield in England.Combining Norse sagas, Byzantine accounts, Anglo-Saxon chronicles, and even King Harald’s own verse and prose into a single, compelling story, Don Hollway vividly depicts the violence and spectacle of the late Viking era and delves into the dramatic events that brought an end to almost three centuries of Norse conquest and expansion.