Лучшие книги Синклера МакКея

С древних времен человек пытался изобрести шифры, которые невозможно взломать. Скрывающие связь влюбленные, секретные сообщества и церковные ордена, разведчики, дипломаты и военные — лишь небольшая часть тех, кто стремился любой ценой сохранить свои тайны. Перемещаясь между эпохами, историк и писатель Синклер Маккей рассказывает о самых знаменитых шифрах и дешифровщиках, хитроумных шпионах и контрразведчиках, поэтах и ученых, включавших в свои труды тайнопись, и, конечно же, о всевозможных кодах. Читатели узнают о глифах майя и библейских пророчествах, о загадочном Манускрипте Войнича, шифровальной машине «Энигма», о сообщениях, которые…

Throughout the twentieth century, Berlin stood at the centre of a convulsing world. This history is often viewed as separate acts: the suffering of the First World War, the cosmopolitan city of science, culture and sexual freedom Berlin became, steep economic plunges, the rise of the Nazis, the destruction of the Second World War, the psychosis of genocide, and a city rent in two by competing ideologies. But people do not live their lives in fixed eras. An e

A gripping work of narrative nonfiction recounting the history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of World War II.

On February 13th, 1945 at 10:03 PM, British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death.

Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left. Sinclair McKay's The Fire and the Darkness is a pulse-pounding work of history that looks at the life of the city in the days before the attack, tracks each moment of the bombing, and considers the long period of reconstruction and recovery. The Fire and the Darkness is powered by McKay's reconstruction of this unthinkable terror from the points of view of the ordinary civilians: Margot Hille, an apprentice brewery worker; Gisela Reichelt, a ten-year-old schoolgirl; boys conscripted into the Hitler Youth; choristers of the Kreuzkirche choir; artists, shop assistants, and classical musicians, as well as the Nazi officials stationed there.

What happened that night in Dresden was calculated annihilation in a war that was almost over. Sinclair McKay's brilliant work takes a complex, human, view of this terrible night and its aftermath in a gripping book that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.

A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year
'Powerful... there is rage in his ink. McKay's book grips by its passion and originality. Some 25,000 people perished in the firestorm that raged through the city. I have never seen it better described' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the 'Florence of the Elbe'. Explosive bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic in a war already won?
From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames reaching almost a mile high - the wind so searingly hot that the lungs of those in its path were instantly scorched - through the eerie period of reconstruction, bestselling author Sinclair McKay creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human detail.
Along the way we encounter, among many others across the city, a Jewish woman who thought the English bombs had been sent from heaven, novelist Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that the smouldering landscape was like walking on the surface of the moon, and 15-year-old Winfried Bielss, who, having spent the evening ushering refugees, wanted to get home to his stamp collection. He was not to know that there was not enough time.
Impeccably researched and deeply moving, McKay uses never-before-seen sources to relate the untold stories of civilians and vividly conveys the texture of contemporary life. Dresden is invoked as a byword for the illimitable cruelties of war, but with the distance of time, it is now possible to approach this subject with a much clearer gaze, and with a keener interest in the sorts of lives that ordinary people lived and lost, or tried to rebuild.
Writing with warmth and colour about morality in war, the instinct for survival, the gravity of mass destruction and the manipulation of memory, this is a master historian at work.
'Churchill said that if bombing cities was justified, it was always repugnant. Sinclair McKay has written a shrewd, humane and balanced account of this most controversial target of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign, the ferocious consequence of the scourge of sm' Allan Mallinson, author of Fight to the Finish
'Beautifully-crafted, elegiac, compelling - Dresden delivers with a dark intensity and incisive compassion rarely equalled. Authentic and authoritative, a masterpiece of its genre' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo
'Compelling... Sinclair McKay brings a dark subject vividly to life' Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent
'This is a brilliantly clear, and fair, account of one of the most notorious and destructive raids in the history aerial warfare. From planning to execution, the story is told by crucial participants - and the victims who suffered so cruelly on the ground from the attack itself and its aftermath' Robert Fox, author of We Were There

Bletchley Park was where one of the war's most famous - and crucial - achievements was made: the cracking of Germany's "Enigma" code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside was home to Britain's most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology - indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. But, though plenty has been written about the boffins, and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction - from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing - what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? What was life like for them - an odd, secret territory between the civilian and the military? Sinclair McKay's book is the first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, and an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties - of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in) - of a youthful Roy Jenkins, useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels - and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other's work.

«Мощная книга… На каждой странице чувствуется ярость. Книга завораживает этой страстью и необычной подачей. Около 25 000 человек погибли в огненной буре, пронесшейся по городу... Пожалуй, это лучшее описание тех событий». — Макс Гастингс, Sunday Times.

«Прекрасно созданная, элегическая, убедительная книга. Ее отличает мрачная динамика и пронзительное сострадание, равных которым нет. Самобытный и авторитетный, шедевр в своем жанре». — Дэмиен Льюис, автор книги «Ноль шесть браво»

«Убедительно... Синклер Маккей оживляет мрачную тему». — Кит Лоу, автор книги «Дикий континент»

«Это блестяще ясный и честный рассказ об одной из самых печально известных и разрушительных бомбардировок в истории воздушной войны. От планирования до исполнения.
История, рассказанная людьми, пострадавшими от этих трагических событий». — Роберт Фокс, автор книги «Мы были там»


В начале февраля 1945 года небо над Дрезденом полыхало. Союзники превратили не имевшую военного значения и поэтому ранее почти не пострадавшую от налетов столицу Саксонии со всеми ее историческими дворцами, церквями, старинными домами, музеями и памятниками в груду дымящихся развалин.
Дрезден возвышается сегодня как напоминание о безумии тотальной войны. Тот факт, что город располагался в сердце нацистской Германии и оказался одним из мест, где раньше прочих с рвением претворялись в жизнь самые грязные политические практики Национал-социалистической партии, порождает серьезные вопросы этического плана. Признавая страдания многих тысяч людей — детей, женщин, беженцев, стариков — той ночью и в течение последующих лет, не преуменьшаем ли мы ужас преступлений нацистского режима, которые совершались у них на глазах?
Автор книги Синклер Маккей — писатель и журналист, обозреватель Daily Telegraph и The Secret Listeners, специализируется на написании книг, посвященных истории середины ХХ века. Маккей дает слово жителям Дрездена, чьими глазами мы можем увидеть безумства войны и ответить для себя на сложные морально-этические вопросы, которые автор ставит перед читателем.