Bøger af Adam Zamoyski

Adam Zamoyski first wrote his history of Poland two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. This substantially revised and updated edition sets the Soviet era in the context of the rise, fall and remarkable rebirth of an indomitable nation.In 1797, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland among themselves, rewriting Polish history to show that they had brought much-needed civilisation to a primitive backwater. But the country they wiped off the map had been one of Europe's largest and most richly varied, born of diverse cultural traditions and one of the boldest constitutional experiments ever attempted. Its destruction ultimately led to two world wars and the Cold War.Zamoyski's fully revised history of Poland looks back over a thousand years of turmoil and triumph, chronicling how Poland has been restored at last to its rightful place in Europe.

Adam Zamoyski's bestselling account of Napoleon's invasion of Russia and his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound effect on European history.In 1812 the most powerful man in the world assembled the largest army in history and marched on Moscow with the intention of consolidating his dominion. But within months, Napoleon's invasion of Russia - history's first example of total war - had turned into an epic military disaster. Over 400,000 French and Allied troops perished and Napoleon was forced to retreat.Adam Zamoyski's masterful work draws on the harrowing first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. The result takes the reader beyond the invasion of Russia to present both a poignant tale of the individual foot soldier and a sweeping history of a turbulent time.

'Adam Zamoyski's book on Paderewski.. is a shrewd and lively account, the first solidly informed and reliable one, of a life that almost constitutes the last gasp of 1848 and its Romantic revolution... Paderewski brought off the very difficult feat of starting as Wunderkind and ending as grand old man, and Adam Zamoyski's biography does definitive justice to both sides.'Norman Stone, The Times Literary SupplementHailed as a genius and national hero, likened to Einstein and Gandhi, Paderewski rose from provincial obscurity to become the most famous pianist in history - the twentieth century's first superstar - as well as Prime Minister of Poland. For more than fifty years, until his death in 1941, he was a household name, and all over the world "Paddymania" was rife. Audiences swooned - at least a dozen ladies had to be "carried out in a fainting condition" when he performed in Edinburgh in 1894; he was mobbed in Paris, London and all over America, besieged with love letters and proposals of marriage. Critics eulogized - James Huneker found his playing "totally overwhelming", and even George Bernard Shaw admitted that Paderewski's musical "intelligence" permitted him to seize ten nuances in a composition for every one the average pianist picked out. Advertisers swore by him; the press explored minutest details of his life. Heads of state received him - he played for Queen Victoria at Windsor, and for Woodrow Wilson at the White House; he was admired by politicians from Lloyd George to Mussolini, by artists from Conrad to Burne-Jones and Saint-Saëns. Why then, after his death, did Paderewski come to be largely forgotten?Adam Zamoyski sets out not only to reassess Paderewski's achievements, but to revive, with the help of new research, the astonishing story of his life. It is a story with elements of both the fairy tale and the melodrama, in which - despite the trials of his early life, his chaotic musical education, his tragic first marriage, and the initial hostility of audiences and critics - Paderewski's fanatical ambition to "do something for Poland" drives him to unprecedented success.Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, Zamoyski unravels facts from the legends that grew up around the pianist-statesman. He clarifies Paderewski's extreme personality, his complex romantic life, his musical and political careers; and above all he attempts to solve the mystery of his undeniable, irresistible power.'Zamoyski ... has written a very readable and well researched account of a man who, despite massive success and a private life with more than its share of tragedy, never lost his sense of humour. It is a romantic story and the author tells it well.' The Literary Review'The portrait of the elderly Paderewski, after his resignation, living in Switzerland surrounded by a bevy of adoring women, is particularly convincing - and very sad.' The Financial Times'Adam Zamoyski has unearthed from many sources the true story of this remarkable man's achievements. Paderewski lives again in his immaculate phrasing and his entire life is examined in meticulous and rewarding detail.' Eastern Daily Press'This is an excellent book for the general reader, and full of valuable sign-posts for specialists who want to follow up the amazing story in greater detail.' The Sunday Telegraph

USA rights ONLY. As Zamoyski set out to update The Polish Way, his bestselling first history of Poland, he realized the task required not so much re-writing as re-thinking the known facts as well as the assumptions of the past. The events of the last twenty years and the growth of the independent Polish state allowed him to look at Polands past with a fresh eye. Tracing Polands complex development from the Middle Ages to present day, Zamoyski examines the countrys political, economic, and military struggles, as well as its culture, art, and richly varied society through the ages, bringing the major events and characters in Polands history to life.

Napoleon dominated nearly all of Europe by 1810, largely succeeding in his aim to reign over the civilized world. But Britain eluded him. To conquer the island nation, he needed Russia's Tsar Alexander's help. The Tsar refused, and Napoleon vowed to teach him a lesson by intimidation and force. The ensuing invasion of Russia, during the frigid winter of 1812, would mark the beginning of the end of Napoleon's empire. Although his army captured Moscow after a brutal march deep into hostile territory, it was a hollow victory for the demoralized troops. Napoleon's men were eventually turned back, and their defeat was a momentous turning point in world affairs. Dramatic, insightful, and enormously absorbing, Moscow 1812 is a masterful work of history.

'Adam Zamoyski's dashing account of the romantic movement, HOLY MADNESS, is bold narrative history at its most imaginative' Observer

A superb study of one of the most important, romantic and dynamic figures of European history. 'A fine book ... the web of political intrigue unfolds like an appetising detective novel' Scotsman

A magnificent and timely examination of an age of fear, subversion, suppression and espionage, Adam Zamoyski explores the attempts of the governments of Europe to police the world in a struggle against obscure forces, seemingly dedicated to the overthrow of civilisation. The advent of the French Revolution confirmed the worst fears of the rulers of Europe. They saw their states as storm-tossed vessels battered by terrible waves from every quarter and threatened by horrific monsters from the deep. Rulers' nerves were further unsettled by the voices of the Enlightenment, envisaging improvement only through a radical transformation of the future role of the monarchy and the Church. Napoleon's arrival on the European stage intensified these fears, and the changes he wrought across Europe fully justified them. Yet he also brought some comfort to those rulers who managed to survive: he had tamed the revolution in France and the hegemony he exercised over Europe was a guarantee against subversion. Once Napoleon was toppled, the monarchs of Europe took over this role for themselves. But their attempts to impose order were not only ineffectual, they weakened the very bases of that order. Their obsessive hunt for hidden conspiracy became self-fulfilling. Their use of force and repressive measures alienated the very classes whose support they needed. Reliance on standing armies only served to politicise the military and to give potential revolutionaries the opportunity to get their hands on a ready armed force. Their policies led to the wave of revolutions in 1848, but these fell short of the long-dreaded Armageddon and revealed the groundlessness of their fears. The masses wanted bread and improved working conditions, not the overthrow of the social order. Nevertheless, the sense of a great, undefined, subversive threat never went away and re-surfaced in the form of various supposed conspiracies to take over the world: it still lingers in many quarters today. Adam Zamoyski's compelling history reveals how paranoia came to grip the minds of rulers and much of society, dictating policies that flew in the face of common sense, and continues to hold lessons for politicians.

A completely new edition of the definitive biography of Chopin, unavailable for many years, by one of the finest of contemporary European historians.Two centuries have passed since Chopin's birth, yet his legacy is all around us today. The quiet revolution he wrought influenced the development of Western music profoundly, and he is still probably the most widely studied and revered composer. For many, he is the object of a cult. Yet most people know little of his life, of the man, his thoughts and his feelings; his public image is a sugary blur of sentimentality and melodrama.Adam Zamoyski cuts through the myths and legends to tell the story of Chopin's life, and to reveal all that can be discovered about him as a person. He pays particular attention to recent revelations about the composer's health, and places him within the intellectual and spiritual environment of his day.

The dramatic and little-known story of how, in the summer of 1920, Lenin came within a hair's breadth of shattering the painstakingly constructed Versailles peace settlement and spreading Bolshevism to western Europe.In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess, following a brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to Germany, itself economically ruined by defeat in World War I and racked by internal political dissension.Between Russia and Germany lay Poland, a nation that had only just recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign oppression. But it was economically and militarily weak and its misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 laid it open to attack. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky.All that Great Britain and France had fought for over four years now seemed at risk. By the middle of August the Russians were only a few kilometres from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week's march away. Then occurred the 'Miracle of the Vistula': the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history.As a result, the Versailles peace settlement survived, and Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country. The battle for Warsaw bought Europe nearly two decades of peace, and communism remained a mainly Russian phenomenon, subsuming many of the autocratic and Byzantine characteristics of Russia's tsarist tradition.

Following on from his epic '1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow', bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna.In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle.The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented.Drawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.