There is no finer military historian.

His prose is light and engaging; this is a detailed factual account but it is as pleasurable and easy to read as any well written novel. The maps are excellent, the pace is a brisk canter . . . there are some utterly joyfully arid asides and footnotes that made me laugh aloud . . . this book is simply superb. Buy it. Read it.

Mallinson writes with an exciting pen and a cool head and he understands war.

It is such a relief to read something by a professional who really knows his stuff.

A book of hard-won simplicity and quite beautiful precision

The book that broke the silence... the writing glowers from the page - sorrowful, disbelieving, chastened and yet not without hope... The Broken House... magnificently delivers

A fascinating and spine-chilling book

Extraordinary... a compelling...account

It is precisely the ordinariness of Krüger's life that makes this not just a book about Nazism and Germany but also a book for our own times... In an age when democracy is under threat everywhere...it's salutary to learn how one family, one indvidual among many, could stand by while evil triumphed... Krüger's limpid, almost poetic prose, well translated by Shaun Whiteside, conjures vivd, concrete images of the dullness of life in Eichkamp

The Broken House... stands out for Krüger's unsparing perceptions of the past and the sharpness and eloquence of his prose... It is Krüger's tone, stark and unforgiving, sometimes almost chillingly detached, that makes this memoir so interesting

Every page carries an entertaining story or a fascinating gobbet of artistic gossip.

A fluent writer with a gift for narrative and a sensitive ability to read the artist's work in relation to his life... The decade covered in this volume, which turns on Picasso's identification with the part-beast, part-man mythical Minotaur, is a tumultuous one, both in public and in private life... [it is] deftly presented as Richardson moves from the man to his circle to his art to larger historical events.

Personal and political collide in lively fourth volume of detailed biography... The Minotaur Years retells what might be considered a familiar story, but carries it off with a liveliness generated by short chapters, sharp judgements and occasionally waspish dismissals, all dispatched at pace. It is the fruit of 60 years of thinking, conversing and speculating about the artist, underpinned by detailed looking, research and investigation of his movements moment by moment.

[Richardson] set the standard for modern artists' biographies...The fourth and final volume...is a worthy follow-up to its predecessors... just as rich, just as astounding.

The final chapter of a magisterial biography... The author's unique, extensive knowledge and insider information about Picasso - both the man and artist - informs insightful explications of the nuances and symbolism in Picasso's works... A masterful accomplishment.

Monumental... Nobody has brought us closer [than Richardson] to understanding this extraordinary and complex artist.

[A] magisterial work... superbly illustrated.

[A] magisterial and superbly illustrated biography.

Monumental... This uncompleted project will surely be the Ozymandias of all biographies, since Richardson's talents were uniquely matched to his protean subject.

Wonderfully lively, greatly informative and memorably insightful... a great read.

Subtle, perceptive and beautifully written

Many consider the years before 1945 to be the most crucial in understanding Germany and the Germans. Wait until you have read this book.

Harald Jähner's deeply researched, panoramic account of how Germany rebuilt and discovered itself from 1945-1955 is an eye-opening, thrilling read

A magnificent overview of the astonishing decade in Germany that followed the defeat of Nazism

Eye-opening and often moving... a sobering look at how societies rebuild

Highly readable... Counter-intuitive but thoughtful

[A] thoughtful narrative... filling the yawning gap on bookshop shelves between a growing number of modern German history texts and the oversupply of Nazi studies that end in Hitler's bunker

Aftermath takes in the immediate postwar years where Germany was administered by the Allies... Jähner excels

Fascinating... Books about Word War II continue to spill out by the ton, but there has been less attention paid to how Germans coped with the country's shameful Nazi past after the conflict was over

Rarely has a non-fiction book so skilfully combined vividness, drama and eloquence.

Jähner's gripping 500-page X-ray-vision tale of an often overlooked and misperceived phase of German history reveals, like all great history books, as much about the first decade after the war as about today.

Clearly written, full of empathy for everyday life, which is far too seldom taken into consideration... You devour it like a novel.

A popular work of non-fiction in the best sense.