11:15 am, 3 September 1939. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain confirms the nation's fears by announcing that Britain is at war with Germany. Outbreak is the definitive history of the build-up to, outbreak and first few months of the Second World War. Drawing on the Imperial War Museum's extensive archives, this book features the personal stories of real men and women who lived through the startling events of that year, as well as those who were actively involved in the political negotiations and their aftermath. Featuring numerous photographs and the voices of key players, as well as contributions from well-known figures who were directly affected by the build up to war, Outbreak is a gripping record of an extraordinary year in British history.

This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today). When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers’ spirits, but also helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. “A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved.” — Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Whether or not you’re a book lover, you’ll be moved.” — Entertainment Weekly

View more details of this book at www.walkerbooks.com.au

A first-hand account of the Falklands War from the perspective of the Royal Marine Band Service members who fought in the conflict. The Royal Marines are renowned for their military skill and also for having one of the finest military bands in the world. These highly trained and talented musicians are equally at home parading at Buckingham Palace, playing at the Royal Albert Hall, or on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in a foreign port. Why then when the Argentines invaded the Falklands in April 1982 did these superb musicians get involved in what became a serious and deadly military campaign? The answer is that, in addition to their musical expertise, the RM Band Service members are trained for military service and fully qualified in a multitude of military and medical skills, providing support to their comrades, the fighting commandos. The Band That Went to War is a graphic first-hand account of the Falklands War as it has never been told before. It describes the roles played by Royal Marine musicians in the conflict; unloading the wounded from helicopters, moving tons of stores and ammunition, burying their dead at sea and guarding and repatriating Argentine prisoners of war. These and other unseen tasks were achieved while still ready to provide morale boosting music to their commando brethren and other frontline troops. These men are not just musicians; they are Royal Marines. Praise for The Band That Went to War “I really enjoyed this account of how the Band of the Royal Marines were involved in the attempt to liberate the Falkland Islands back in 1982 . . . Brian Short’s excellent book is really entertaining.” —Books Monthly

A moving, poetic narrative and child-friendly illustrations follow the heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful journey of a little girl who is forced to become a refugee. The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious. In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies’s text combines with Rebecca Cobb’s expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.

Looking out a second-story window of her family's quarters at the Pearl Harbor naval base on December 7, 1941, eleven-year-old Jackie Smith could see not only the Rising Sun insignias on the wings of attacking Japanese bombers, but the faces of the pilots inside. Most American children on the home front during the Second World War saw the enemy only in newsreels and the pages of Life Magazine, but from Pearl Harbor on, "the war"--with its blackouts, air raids, and government rationing--became a dramatic presence in all of their lives. Thirty million Americans relocated, 3,700,000 homemakers entered the labor force, sparking a national debate over working mothers and latchkey children, and millions of enlisted fathers and older brothers suddenly disappeared overseas or to far-off army bases. By the end of the war, 180,000 American children had lost their fathers. In "Daddy's Gone to War", William M. Tuttle, Jr., offers a fascinating and often poignant exploration of wartime America, and one of generation's odyssey from childhood to middle age. The voices of the home front children are vividly present in excerpts from the 2,500 letters Tuttle solicited from men and women across the country who are now in their fifties and sixties. From scrap-collection drives and Saturday matinees to the atomic bomb and V-J Day, here is the Second World War through the eyes of America's children. Women relive the frustration of always having to play nurses in neighborhood war games, and men remember being both afraid and eager to grow up and go to war themselves. (Not all were willing to wait. Tuttle tells of one twelve year old boy who strode into an Arizona recruiting office and declared, "I don't need my mother's consent...I'm a midget.") Former home front children recall as though it were yesterday the pain of saying good-bye, perhaps forever, to an enlisting father posted overseas and the sometimes equally unsettling experience of a long-absent father's return. A pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history and childhood, "Daddy's Gone to War" views the experiences of ordinary children through the lens of developmental psychology. Tuttle argues that the Second World War left an indelible imprint on the dreams and nightmares of an American generation, not only in childhood, but in adulthood as well. Drawing on his wide-ranging research, he makes the case that America's wartime belief in democracy and its rightful leadership of the Free World, as well as its assumptions about marriage and the family and the need to get ahead, remained largely unchallenged until the tumultuous years of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate. As the hopes and expectations of the home front children changed, so did their country's. In telling the story of a generation, Tuttle provides a vital missing piece of American cultural history.