Michael K. Jones's new history of Stalingrad offers a radical reinterpretation of the most famous battle of the WW2. Combining eyewitness testimony of Red Army fighters with fresh archive material, the book gives a dramatic insight into the thinking of the Russian command and the mood of the ordinary soldiers. He focuses on the story of the Russian 62nd Army, which began the campaign in utter demoralisation, yet turned the tables on the powerful German 6th Army. He explains the Red Army's extraordinary performance using battle psychology, emphasising the vital role of leadership, morale and motivation in a triumph that turned the course of the war.

Colin Anson was born Claus Ascher in Berlin and raised a Protestant. He was forced to flee Nazi Germany because his father, Curt Ascher, was one of Hitler's few serious political opponents during the 1930s. Curt stood up for his beliefs, was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned at Dachau and murdered there in 1937. In 1939, with his own life in danger, Colin found refuge in Britain, where he went on to join the British Army. Selected for Commando service, he trained with 3 Troop, the only German-speaking unit in the British armed forces. He was attached to the Royal Marines and took part in the invasion of Italy and Sicily in 1943, surviving a near-fatal head wound, before participating in raids into Yugoslavia and Albania, and then in the liberation of Corfu. At the end of the war, he was to find out who had betrayed his father, and the book includes an account of how he reacted to this discovery. Not only is "German Schoolboy, British Commando" a thrilling account of his valiant service in the second World War, its description of Colin's childhood as the son of one of Hitler's most outspoken opponents provides a unique insight into the political maelstrom of 1930s Germany. It is an extraordinary portrait of a son's bravery and determination, continuing his father's legacy as he fought to defeat the Nazis.

"In many ways I was like Alice," writes Alan Macfarlane on his first encounter with Japan, "that very assured and middle-class English girl, when she walked through the looking glass. I was full of certainty, confidence and unexamined assumptions about my categories. In this fascinating and endlessly surprising book he takes us with him on an exploration of every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate.

Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa two of the fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII he witnesses the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier has for his enemy. During temporary lapses in the fighting, conditions on the islands mean that the Marines often can't wash, stay dry, dig latrines, or even find time to eat. Suffering from constant fear, fatigue, and filth, the struggle of simply living in a combat zone is utterly debilitating. Yet despite horrendous conditions Sledge finds time to keep notes that he would later turn into a book. Described as one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war, With the Old Breed tells with compassion and honesty of the cruelty, bravery and deaths of the men he fought alongside, and of his own journey from patriotic innocence to batte-scarred veteran.