Every so often a book comes out that the entire political class needs to read ... Edgerton is Britain's most exciting and arresting late-modern historian ... Thanks to this rich and compelling book, we now have a proper map and compass.

A fierce and dazzling account of 20th-century Britain

An extraordinary revisionist study of modern Britain ... Edgerton's aim here is nothing short of a radical repositioning of our sense of ourselves as a nation. It's a startling book, and an unexpected thesis ... I'll be reading [it] over and over, and for years to come.'

Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain in the 20th century ... You will not find a better informed history of this country in the last century.

Stimulating and bracing ... He demonstrates that the story the British tell about themselves - and how it is taught in schools and discussed in the public sphere - is bogus.

Unsentimental and rigorous rewriting of British history. ... It looks beyond the froth of political debate, takes business seriously and analyses government as much from Whitehall and administration as Westminster and politics.

Beautifully written and can be read with pleasure by the general reader as well as the trained historian

Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating ... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one that future historians may not accept but will be unable to ignore.

A sweepingly, and ambitiously, revisionist account of 20th century British history ... full of striking lines ... and a very important challenge to much of the existing historiography.

Timely jolt to a deluded 'Bullshit Britain'. David Edgerton fillets national delusion and historical amnesia ... of a country that knows so little of its own history.

Edgerton is an extraordinary historian ... Written with bracing élan, Rise and Fall generates insights at every turn. Edgerton set out to rattle "the cage of clichés which imprison our historical and political imaginations", and succeeds magnificently.

... refreshing and immensely stimulating, and should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to understand the reality of twentieth-century Britain. Lewis Namier, another historian known for his combative brand of scholarship, viewed iconoclasm as the judge of a great historian, that having produced an account of a period 'others should not be able to practise within its sphere in the terms of the preceding era'. Edgerton has certainly achieved this.

Hilmes’ narrative mosaic becomes mesmerising.

A breathtaking book

Hilmes has unearthed many memorable vignettes ... Jefferson Chase's smooth translation contributes to a chillingly breezy read.

A punchy, vibrant, and highly original account of the most controversial of all modern Olympiads.

A riveting, immersive glimpse into German—and indeed global—life tiptoeing towards disaster. Through Hilmes's creative approach to historical storytelling, a multivocal Berlin lives and breathes vividly.

Fascinating… Oliver Hilmes’ pen portrait immerses the reader in a city still resistant to totalitarian control

A dense, enthralling portrait of those sixteen days, reflective of the whole of Germany. As riveting as a novel.

Carrying readers to venues far from the fields of athletic competition, the richly detailed 16-day narrative spotlights men and women who receive no medals but who deserve empathetic attention … A riveting drama.

This story is so well told it's almost criminal – precise and swift like a 400-meter-hurdle race. It's difficult to assign this book to a single genre … It reads like a historical novel of society, albeit one grounded in diaries, newspaper reports and other sources.

The light-footed, elegant tale of a summer 80 years ago.

A masterpiece, and a highly original one too