The first scientifically researched biography to correct the image of the dumb blonde at the side of the mass murderer

An utterly compelling portrayal of the weird hidden life of the dictator ... who, like some black star, destroyed all those he touched. Eva was only one of millions of his victims - but a willing one

Easily the best biography of Eva Braun so far written

Fascinating ... overturns the established view of her as an apolitical bystander

Braun emerges as bright but vapid, energetic but soulless. As thorough and clear a look of a monster's lover as we are likely to get

Having painstakingly reviewed the archives for references to Eva Braun's relationship with Hitler, Görtemaker presents a portrait of an engaged and engaging young woman, fervently supportive of National Socialism and one of the few members of Hitler's inner circle to never lose his trust or fall out of affection

Well researched and lucidly written. What interests [Kempe] is not really Berlin but Washington and Moscow; we learn ... a great deal about the machinations of the two superpowers

Berlin 1961 is a page-turner, written with all the vigour and verve of a spy novel, so you will have difficulty in putting it down until you have finished its 500 pages of gripping narrative

A gripping, well-researched, and thought-provoking book with many lessons for today

Kempe has masterfully captured the dramatic dimensions of a great story that shaped the world order for twenty-eight years. Berlin 1961 is an important achievement

An amazing drama ... Kempe's compelling narrative is a triumph of great writing and research

Engaging, richly researched, thought-provoking ... combines the 'You are there' storytelling skills of a journalist, the analytical skills of the political scientist, and the historian's use of declassified U.S., Soviet, and German documents to provide unique insight into the forces and individuals behind these events

Kempe's compelling narrative, astute analysis, and meticulous research bring fresh insight into a crucial and perilous episode of the Cold War, bringing Kennedy and Khrushchev to life as they square off at the brink of nuclear war. His masterly telling of a scary and cautionary tale from half a century ago has the immediacy of today's headlines

Takes us to Ground Zero of the Cold War. Reading these pages, you feel as if you are standing at Checkpoint Charlie, amid the brutal tension of a divided Berlin

European history comes in many guises, but Brendan Simms's strategic and geopolitical approach provides a strong and lucid framework within which everything else fits into place. His emphasis on the centrality of Germany offsets more western-orientated accounts while also giving due prominence to Eastern Europe. Covering the whole of the modern period, this book is more than an excellent introduction; it's a major interpretational achievement

World history is German history, and German history is world history. This is the powerful case made by this gifted historian of Europe, whose expansive erudition revives the proud tradition of the history of geopolitics, and whose immanent moral sensibility reminds us that human choices made in Berlin (and London) today about the future of Europe might be decisive for the future of the world

A tremendous feat ... Simms's pages teem with some of the greatest characters in European history

Remarkably, such a large and complex book ... offers a very straightforward argument and thesis ... The more familiar the story, the more arresting is Simms's repositioning of it ... This isn't simply academic history but an account of how we came to be, albeit ambivalently and conflictedly, involved in a continental narrative that is still unfolding