Osprey's Big Reveal: General Military (1) and Anatomy of a Ship

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On the Big Reveal today, we're unveiling some of our 2020 General Military titles and what's coming up in the Anatomy of a Ship series. Let us know what you think of these books below!

GNM: Be Para Fit

The 4-week formula to elite physical fitness – are you ready to Be PARA Fit?

Revolutionise your lifestyle and transform your fitness with the powerful new programme from Major Sam McGrath, former commander of the legendary PARAs' P Company selection process. Whatever your fitness level, this four-week formula will teach you how to realise your full potential, to master your goals and achieve transformational results.

CHALLENGE yourself and your body as you discover the difference between exercise and effective training.

CONQUER your fears and unlock the true ‘Paratrooper Mindset’, allowing you to believe in your ability to push yourself to new heights.

EMPOWER your life as Major McGrath shows you how to embed elite physical fitness into your everyday life, teaching you how to integrate the essential foundations of good sleep, healthy nutrition, and purposeful activity.

GNM: Blazing Star, Setting Sun

From popular Pacific Theatre expert Jeffrey R. Cox comes this insightful new history of the critical Guadalcanal and Solomons campaign at the height of World War II. His previous book, Morning Star, Rising Sun, had found the US Navy at its absolute nadir and the fate of the Enterprise, the last operational US aircraft carrier at this point in the war, unknown. This new volume completes the history of this crucial campaign, combining detailed research with a novelist’s flair for the dramatic to reveal exactly how, the tide of war finally turned. By the end of February 1944, the Japanese would no longer hold the materiel or skilled manpower advantage. From this point on, the American star was unquestionably on the ascendant, edging Japanese imperialism towards its sunset.

Jeffrey Cox’s analysis and attention to detail are second to none. But what truly sets this book apart is how he combines this microscopic attention to detail, often unearthing new facts along the way, with an engaging style that transports the reader to the heart of the story, bringing the events on the deep blue of the Pacific vividly to life.

GNM: I Will Run Wild

I Will Run Wild tells the story of Americans, British, Dutch, Australians and New Zealanders taken by surprise from Pearl Harbor to Singapore that first Sunday of December 1941, fighting with what they had at hand against a stronger and better-prepared foe, and in so doing creating the basis for the turnaround of fortune and eventual victory.

The book follows the format established in Pacific Thunder and Tidal Wave, using solid historical material and analysis combined with extensive first-hand accounts from new or previously under-utilized sources of events to bring history alive for all readers, from the lay observer to the knowledgeable expert.

GNM: In Good Faith

In Good Faith tells the story from the Japanese surrender in 1945 through America’s involvement in the French Indochina War and the initial advisory missions that followed. It describes how these missions gradually grew in both scope and scale, and how America became ever more committed to the region, especially following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, which led to the first bombing missions over North Vietnam. It finishes at the climax of one of those operations, Rolling Thunder, and just prior to the first commitment of US ground forces to the war in Vietnam in the spring of 1965. Drawing on the latest research, these two volumes tell the whole story for the first time, including the truth behind the events of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which opened the door to Washington’s entry into the war, and which can now be told in full thanks to recently declassified National Security Agency top secret material. Examining in depth both the events and the key figures of the conflict, this is a definitive new history of American engagement in Vietnam.

GNM: Annihilation

This is the third and final book in a trilogy covering the bitter course of World War II in the Ukraine. Under constant pressure from the advancing Soviets, the German Army retreated first beyond the Dnepr, and were then pushed back across the Bug and Dniester. Large numbers of German troops were encircled in the Cherkassy Pocket, and to a lesser extent in the Kamanets-Podolsk and Brody pockets, while German forces in the Crimea were isolated and ultimately destroyed. The casualties suffered by the German forces were immense, forcing the diversion of an increasing proportion of the diminishing strength of the Wehrmacht to the region; this in turn left almost no reserves elsewhere and thus greatly facilitated the devastating blow that fell upon the German Army Group Centre in the summer of 1944.

GNM: Audacious Missions of World War II

Winning World War II was about more than military force. It required guile, and tremendous acts of bravery by Special Forces and intelligence operatives who had the odds stacked against them. Using hundreds of documents and images from The National Archives, including some that have never been seen in print before, this book reveals some of World War II’s most audacious missions.

These include Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydrich in Czechoslovakia in 1942, Operation Chariot, the attempt to damage the mighty German warship Tirpitz while she was in dock in St-Nazaire in France; and Operation Mincemeat, a complex plot whereby a corpse, replete with documentation designed to mislead the enemy, was dropped in southern Spain to spread misinformation.

GNM: Blade of a Sword

Combining traditional military history with a trench-level soldier’s view of the Great War, this book tracks the experiences of an elite German regiment throughout the conflict, following the men who fought and died in the service of what would ultimately prove to be a futile cause.

The German 73rd Fusilier Regiment spent the whole of World War I on the Western Front, and was one of the Imperial German Army’s most elite units. Starting with the occupation of Liège, it took part in nearly every major campaign in the West, including the Champagne offensives, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and the Operation Michael offensives. Using the personal accounts of the soldiers themselves, including Ernst Jünger, author of Storm of Steel, this engrossing story of a regiment at war presents the horror of trench warfare on a human scale, through the eyes of ordinary men-at-arms, as they fought for honour and survival in military history’s most brutal theatre of combat.

GNM: Blood, Metal and Dust

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics, and their influence is felt to this day.

Blood, Metal and Dust is the first military history to offer a comprehensive overview of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing in-depth accounts of the operations undertaken by both US and UK forces. Brigadier Ben Barry explores the wars which shaped the modern Middle East, providing a detailed narrative of operations as they unfolded. With unparalleled access to official military accounts and extensive contacts in both the UK and the US militaries, Brigadier Barry is uniquely placed to tell the story of these controversial conflicts, and offers a rounded account of the international campaigns which irrevocably changed the global geopolitical landscape.

GNM: Hitler's Tanks

The Panzers that rolled over Europe were Germany’s most famous fighting force, and are some of the most enduring symbols of World War II. However, at the start of the war, Germany’s tanks were nothing extraordinary and it was operational encounters such as facing the Soviet T-34 during Operation Barbarossa which prompted their intensive development. Tactical innovation gave them an edge where technological development had not, making Hitler's tanks a formidable enemy.

Hitler’s Tanks details the development and operational history of the light Panzer I and II, developed in the 1930s; the 35(t) and 38(t); the medium tanks, the Panzer III and IV, that were the backbone of the Panzer Divisions; the Tiger; and the formidable King Tiger, the heaviest tank to see combat in World War II. Drawing on Osprey’s unique and extensive armour archive, Chris McNab skilfully weaves together the story of the fearsome tanks that transformed armoured warfare and revolutionised land warfare forever.

GNM: British Battle Tanks

This book, the last in a four-part series on British Battle Tanks covering the whole history of British armoured warfare, concentrates on those vehicles that have served following the end of World War II up to the present day.

Starting with the Centurion, the title explores those types that equipped the armoured divisions lined up on the German plains to resist any potential Soviet offensive, as well as in Korea and Suez, including the Chieftain and Conqueror, and modern tanks such as the Challenger 2 which are still in service today. Covering the many variants of these and other tanks in British service as well as their deployments around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, this illustrated volume is a comprehensive guide to the development of British tanks since the Second World War.

ANT: The Battleship USS Iowa

Transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1944, the USS Iowa first fired her guns in anger in the Marshall Islands campaign, and sunk her first enemy ship, the Katori. The Iowa went on to serve across a number of pivotal Pacific War campaigns. The ship ended the war spending several months bombarding the Japanese Home Islands before the surrender in August 1945.

After taking part in the Korea War, the Iowa was decommissioned in 1958, before being briefly reactivated in the 1980s as part of President Reagan’s 600-Ship Navy Plan. After being decommissioned a second and final time in 1990, the Iowa is now a museum ship in Los Angeles.

This new addition to the Anatomy of the Ship series is illustrated with contemporary photographs, scaled plans of the ship and hundreds of superb 3D illustrations which bring every detail of this historic battleship to life.