S2 Actual reading list

Mussolini's Greek Island: Fascism and the Italian Occupation of Syros in World War II (International Library of War Studies)

Sheila Lecoeur

Tauris Academic Studies · 2009

A powerful and unique study of the realities and long-term impact of occupation, "Mussolini's Greek Island" reveals the Italian dictator's imperial vision, the mechanisms of Italian occupation and its tragic consequences. The small island of Syros is a vital entry-point illuminating Italian imperialism - its ethos, fascist connection, pretension and administrative achievements, marred by famine. Here Lecoeur examines the devastating effects of war and occupation on the local community - starvation, corruption and survival - and, drawing on local archives and interviews with survivors, offers new insight into this crucial but little known episode. Enriching our understanding of Mussolini's hegemonic visions and the mechanisms of occupation, a key issue of our times, this path-breaking book will appeal to scholars of fascism, World War II and military occupation in general.

My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner - A German against the Third Reich

Friedrich Kellner

Cambridge University Press · 2018

This is a truly unique account of Nazi Germany at war and of one man's struggle against totalitarianism. A mid-level official in a provincial town, Friedrich Kellner kept a secret diary from 1939 to 1945, risking his life to record Germany's path to dictatorship and genocide and to protest his countrymen's complicity in the regime's brutalities. Just one month into the war he is aware that Jews are marked for extermination and later records how soldiers on leave spoke openly about the mass murder of Jews and the murder of POWs; he also documents the Gestapo's merciless rule at home from euthanasia campaigns against the handicapped and mentally ill to the execution of anyone found listening to foreign broadcasts. This essential testimony of everyday life under the Third Reich is accompanied by a foreword by Alan Steinweis and the remarkable story of how the diary was brought to light by Robert Scott Kellner, Friedrich's grandson.

Pacific Express: The Critical Role of Military Logistics in World War II (Amphibious Operations in the South Pacific in WWII, Vol. 3)

William L. McGee

Under one cover, an edited collection of the best works by noted military historians on the importance of military logistics in World War II. *** PACIFIC EXPRESS IS ON THE MARINE CORPS COMMANDANT'S PROFESSIONAL READING LIST FOR LOGISTICS FOR ALL OFFICER AND ENLISTED MARINES, WHETHER ACTIVE DUTY OR RESERVE. *** In PACIFIC EXPRESS, award-winning World War II military historian William L. McGee acts as editor gathering together the best writings on military logistics in WWII. Consider this: In World War II, 16.1 million men and women served in the U.S. Armed Forces. For every individual who served in combat, ten individuals served in a support role. McGee profiles many of the major components of the “Pacific express”: * U.S. Navy Seabees and U.S. Marine Corps Engineers - who built the Advance Bases. * U.S. Navy crews - who manned the amphibious force and Fleet’s floating mobile Service Squadrons throughout the vast reaches of the Pacific. * U.S. Merchant Marine and U.S. Naval Armed Guard - who manned and defended the thousands of War Shipping Administration cargo ships, transports, and tankers to “Deliver the goods!” * U.S. Army and civilian (civil service) Transportation Corps personnel - who operated most of the Army’s large and small vessels, but were seldom covered by the consumer-oriented media during WWII. * U.S. Coast Guardsmen - who manned hundreds of U.S. Army and Navy long-haul vessels and thousands of battle-loaded amphibious landing ships and craft. IN THE AUTHOR'S WORDS “I’ve dedicated PACIFIC EXPRESS to the men and women – military and civilian – who served in logistical support roles for the front line combat personnel in WWII. The story of the vital logistics services supporting the U.S. Armed Forces operating in the Pacific is told - proof positive that warfare is not all blazing combat.” –William L. McGee 560 pp, 111 b&w photos, 7 maps, 21 figures/tables/charts, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, Paperback 6" x 9" OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES Vol. I, THE AMPHIBIANS ARE COMING! Emergence of the 'Gator Navy and its Revolutionary Landing Craft Vol. II, THE SOLOMONS CAMPAIGNS, 1942-1943: From Guadalcanal to Bougainville, Pacific War Turning Point WHAT READERS ARE SAYING … ■ A very polished and professional volume covering a major and relatively unheralded part of World War II … I’m sure the author will receive widespread acclaim for providing the quality and quantity of naval history in PACIFIC EXPRESS. –David H. Grover, CDR USNR (Ret), and author of "U.S. Army Ships and Watercraft of World War II" ■ Bill McGee’s account of amphibious operations in the Pacific and of the supply effort needed to support all operations there is meticulously researched and told with the skill of a born storyteller. PACIFIC EXPRESS and the other volumes in the series will make a proud addition to anyone’s library. -Gordon Smith, Chairman, Amphibious Forces Memorial Museum ■ The editors have woven historical facts with firsthand accounts to create a behind-the-scenes look at military logistics in World War II. —C.A. Lloyd, Chairman, USN Armed Guard Veterans Association WWII ■ Besides providing statistics, Bill McGee provides a personal touch with interviews and references to persons who were actually there. -Jim Higman, Merchant Marine Engineer (Ret) and editor of "California Central Coast U.S. Navy Armed Guard & Merchant Marine Vets WWII" ■ Bill McGee hits another home run with PACIFIC EXPRESS. My time served in the South Pacific in WWII springs to life as I hear the bow doors open and the ramp fall on Pacific soil … Reading this book brings back memories and tears to this eighty-plus year old LSM sailor. -Royce N. McNeill, USS LSM-LSMR Association ■ With PACIFIC EXPRESS, Bill McGee secures his title of “Godfather of amphibious operations history.” This Volume III in his series anchors Volumes I and II as essential reading and reference for military history. –Joe Flynn, California Director and Member National Board, USS LCI National Association ■ Although about WWII, much of what is written in PACIFIC EXPRESS applied when I served on the USS HELENA (CA-75) during the Korean War and afterward. Bill McGee does a through job of explaining military logistics in ways we can understand. -Dave Brouchoud, USS Helena (CA-75), Jan 1952–May 1955 ■ Just finished reading Bill McGee’s third volume in his Amphibious Operations series and it certainly passes inspection. –Ron Swanson, Editor, Flotilla, LCT Flotillas of World War II

The Crucible of War Book 1: Wavell's Command

Barrie Pitt

The Crucible of War: Book 1 ‘The definitive work on the Desert War.’ Manchester Evening News Wavell’s Command is the first of the three volumes of The Crucible of War. Volume 1 of The Crucible of War trilogy covers General Wavell’s command, a period that began triumphantly with the rout of the Italian Army and ended in catastrophe with the devastating entry of Rommel into the conflict. On 11th June 1940, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. From their colony in Libya, the Italians began invading Egypt in an attempt to expand their African Empire. Thus began the Desert War – a battle to secure critical Middle East oil supplies which would last for three years. Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East was General Sir Archibald Wavell. By 1940, and with limited resources, he was responsible for all British land forces in Egypt, the Sudan, Palestine, Transjordan and Cyprus, as well as the Army formations in British Somaliland, Aden, Iraq and along the shores of the Persian Gulf. The area for which he had accepted military command thus included nine different countries in two continents. In December 1940 in Libya, Wavell’s Western Desert Force of 36,000 men attacked the Italians across desolate and inhospitable terrain in order to keep Egypt from falling to the Axis and shield access to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and possibly even India from Hitler. Attack was the only form of defense and under field commander General Richard O’Connor, an immensely successful and exhilarating campaign was carried out against Marshal Graziani’s forces. The Italians were pushed back hundreds of miles and 130,000 prisoners were taken. By February 1941 nearly all Axis forces had been expelled from North Africa. It was a remarkable triumph in one of the most dramatic theatres of the Second World War which paved the way for later victories, but not immediately – as Rommel’s Afrika Korps meant Wavell, with a now weakened Western Desert Force, was ordered to send men to Greece, despite his conviction that victory was close. The tide of war was about to turn once more. PRAISE FOR THE CRUCIBLE OF WAR TRILOGY: ‘A magnificent book, Barrie Pitt has almost a novelist’s skill and perception of character.’ Daily Telegraph ‘Totally readable, Mr Pitt’s study depicts equally well the broad outlines of strategy, the confusions and hazards of the battlefield and the personalities of the generals or private soldiers fighting there.’ Oxford Times Barrie Pitt (1918-2006) was well known as a military historian and editor of Purnell’s History of the Second World War and History of the First World War. His publications include Coronel and Falkland, Churchill and the Generals and The Crucible of War, a trilogy covering the North African campaign of the Second World War. He was born in Galway and later lived near Ilminster in Somerset.

The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism

Günter Reimann

Here is a study of the actual workings of business under national socialism. Written in 1939, Reimann discusses the effects of heavy regulation, inflation, price controls, trade interference, national economic planning, and attacks on private property, and what consequences they had for human rights and economic development. This is a subject rarely discussed and for reasons that are discomforting,: as much as the left hated the social and cultural agenda of the Nazis, the economic agenda fit straight into a pattern of statism that had emerged in Europe and the United States, and in this area, the world has not be de-Nazified. This books makes for alarming reading, as one discovers the extent to which the Nazi economic agenda of totalitarian control--without finally abolishing private property--has become the norm. The author is by no means an Austrian but his study provides historical understanding and frightening look at the consequences of state economic management.

The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz

Jack Fairweather

WH Allen · Mar 21, 2019

How do you keep fighting in the face of unimaginable horror? This is untold story of one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War. In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich. His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz. It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades. This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp’s fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Adam Tooze

Viking · 2006

The idea that Nazi Germany was an unstoppable juggernaut, backed by an efficient, highly industrialized economy, has been central to all accounts of World War II. But what if this was not the case? What if the war had its roots in Germany's weakness, not its strength? This is the radical argument in this pathbreaking book, the first account of the Nazi era for the twenty-first century and our globalized world. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics, yet Adam Tooze is the first to place economics alongside race and politics at the heart of the story of the Third Reich. And America, in Tooze's view, is the true pivot for Hitler's epic challenge to a shift in the world order. Hitler intuitively understood how Germany's relative poverty in the 1930s was the result not just of global depression, but also of Germany's limited resources. He predicted the dawning of a globalized world in which Europe would be crushed by America's overwhelming power, against which he saw only one last chance: a German super-state dominating Europe. Doing what Europeans had done for three centuries, he sought to carve out an imperial hinterland through one last land grab to the east, to give him the self-sufficiency to prevail in the coming superpower competition. With the odds stacked against him, he launched his underresourced armies on their unprecedented and ultimately futile rampage across Europe. Hitler knew by the summer of 1939 that his efforts to prepare for a long war with the West were doomed to failure. Ideology drove him forward. Hitler became convinced that Jewish elements in Washington, London, and Paris were circling round him, and from 1938, the international "Jewish question: was synonymous with America in his mind. Even in the summer of 1940, at the moment of Germany's greatest triumphs, Hitler was still haunted by the looming threat of Anglo-American air and sea power, orchestrated by, he believed, the world Jewish conspiracy. Tooze also casts a stark new light on Albert Speer's role in sustaining the Third Reich to its bloody end, after the catastrophe of the Soviet invasion. Speer, Tooze proposes, was no apolitical agent of technocratic efficiency but a Hitler loyalist who would stop at nothing to continue a hopeless battle of attrition, at the cost of tens of millions of lives. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that will fundamentally change the way in which we view Nazi Germany and the Second World War.

Hitler: The Policies of Seduction

Rainer Zitelmann

London House · 1999

Presents convincing evidence that it was Hitler's political strategies and arguments, which built his unprecedented support among the German people.

Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy

Avraham Barkai

Yale University Press · 1990

This respected Israeli scholar argues that fundamental ideological and political goals of Nazi leaders made them receptive to revolutionary economic theories such as those of J. M. Keynes. He examines how the economic system of the Third Reich was based on an anti-liberal philosophy that proved extraordinarily effective in bringing about the 'German Economic Miracle' by 1937.

Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort, 1941-1945

Richard Overy

Penguin Books · 1998

A penetrating and compassionate book on the most gigantic military struggle in world history.--The New York Times Book Review An extraordinary tale... Overy's engrossing book provides extensive details of teh slaughter, brutality, bitterness and destruction on the massive front from the White Sea to the flank of Asia.--Chicago Tribune The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled the largest military force in recorded history and that cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians, was the decisive factor for securing an Allied victory. Now with access to the wealth of film archives and interview material from Russia used to produce the ten-hour television documentary Russia's War, Richard Overy tackles the many persuasive questions surrounding this conflict. Was Stalin a military genius? Was the defense of Mother Russia a product of something greater than numbers of tanks and planes--of something deep within the Russian soul?

Sting of the Scorpion: The Inside Story of the Long Range Desert Group

Mike Morgan

Sutton Pub. · 2003

The Long Range Desert Group was Britain's original Special Force in the Western Desert long before the SAS burst onto the scene. Sting of the Scorpion is the exclusive, authorised, inside story of the tough LRDG raiders of the Second World War, drawn from the unpublished records of the famous force. The unit won unrivalled mastery of the North African desert in their wide-ranging and heavily armed trucks, earning grudging praise even from Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, for their skilful reconnaissance, punishing raids and powers of evasion.

Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943 (Modern War Studies)

Joel S.A. Hayward

University Press of Kansas · September 2001

By the time Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, he knew that his military machine was running out of fuel. In response, he launched Operation Blau, a campaign designed to protect Nazi oilfields in Rumania while securing new ones in the Caucasus. All that stood in the way was Stalingrad. Most accounts of the Battle of Stalingrad have focused on the dismal fate of the German Army. Joel Hayward now chronicles Luftwaffe operations during that campaign, focusing on Hitler's use of the air force as a tactical rather than strategic weapon in close support of ground forces. He vividly details the Luftwaffe's key role as flying artillery, showing that the army relied on Luftwaffe support to a far greater degree than has been previously revealed and that its successes in the East occurred largely because of the effectiveness of that support. Hayward analyzes this major German offensive from the standpoint of cooperation between ground and air forces to attain mutually agreed objectives. He draws on diaries of both key commanders and regular airmen to recreate crucial battles and convey the drama of Hitler's frustrations and reckless leadership. Ultimately, Hayward shows, the poorly conceived strategies of Hitler, Goering, and others in Berlin doomed the efforts of air commander Wolfram von Richthofen, a courageous and resolute leader attempting to come to grips with an increasingly impossible situation. Stopped at Stalingrad is a dynamic case study in combined arms warfare that fills in many of the gaps left by other studies of the eastern war. By reconsidering the campaign in the light of a wider body of documentary sources and analyzing many previously ignored events, Hayward provides military historians and general readers a much deeper and more complete understanding of the Battle of Stalingrad and its impact on World War II.

Army Group South: The Wehrmacht in Russia 1941-1945 (Schiffer Military History)

Werner Haupt

Schiffer Pub. · 1998

After long years of studying sources and literature, Werner Haupt presents the military history of one of the larger theaters of World War II. The completion of the history of “Army Group South” is the result of the author’s utilization of all available German and Russian literature, as well as those combat diaries and documents of the committed troop units that are available in German archives. In addition, the author was assisted in clearing up several questions by the advice of former members of the army group – from commanders to drivers. This third and final volume of a three volume set by Werner Haupt includes a volume each on Army Group North, Army Group Center, and now Army Group South. The author served in the German Army as a soldier and officer in the northern sector of the Eastern Front during the Second World War. He is also the author of Assault on Moscow 1941 (available from Schiffer Publishing Ltd.).

The Battle For Stalingrad

Vasily Chuikov

THE STORY OF WORLD WAR II'S GREATEST BATTLE AS TOLD BY THE RUSSIAN COMMANDER AT STALINGRAD.

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Christopher Bellamy

Knopf · October 30, 2007

The battle on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 was arguably the single most decisive factor of World War II, fixing the course of world history over the next half century. Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict. Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war—in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken—and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of “civilized” warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War. Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men—and women—joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath. Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle’s outcome—the reverberations of which are still felt today—and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear. A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.

Burma: The Longest War 1941-45

Louis Allen

Phoenix Press · 2000

Charting the whole Burma war, this book flows like a novel from the high command to the sharp end setting out a myriad of facts and considerations in a clear and coherent narrative. Ranging far beyond pure military history the story is multi-layered, combining objective analysis with a sensitive account of human reaction in the face of bitter, cruel warfare, disease and an inhospitable terrain. Military events are painstakingly detailed, and set in their political and cultural context. Equal attention is paid to both sides of the conflict and the insights made into Japanese plans and responses make the book uniquely informative, exciting and moving. 'If one had to select one book about the Burma War, this fine work is the best' Dekho, magazine of the Burma Star Association 'There will be few more thorough chronicles of World War Two's most dreaded front than Louis Allen's The Longest War' The Listener

Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity

Amy Bentley

University of Illinois Press · 1998

      Victory gardens, ration books.         While men fought overseas, women fought the war at home, by going to work         and, more subtly, by feeding their families. Mandatory food rationing         during World War II challenged, for the first time, the image of the United         States as a land of plenty and collapsed the boundaries between women's         public and private lives by declaring home production and consumption         to be political activities.       In this fascinating cultural         history, Amy Bentley examines the food-related propaganda surrounding         rationing. She also explores the dual message purveyed by government and         the media that while mandatory rationing was necessary (enabling enough         food to be sent to the U.S. military and Allies overseas), women, black         and white, were also "required" to provide their families with nutritious         food.       Eating for Victory         explores the role of the Wartime Homemaker (media counterpart to the more         familiar Rosie the Riveter) as a pivotal component not only of World War         II but of the development of the United States into a superpower.

Home Front Soldier: The Story of a GI and His Italian American Family During World War II

Richard Aquila

State University of New York Press · 1999

While other collections of letters and memoirs from World War II have dealt with upper-class individuals, officers, or college-educated people, Home Front Soldier is the first to explore the life of an ordinary, working-class, first-generation American. This gripping story of a young soldier, Philip L. Aquila, and his Italian American family during the Second World War includes a detailed introduction, providing historical context to the more than 500 letters that this sergeant wrote to his family back home in Buffalo, New York. Like an epistolary novel, the letters offer an intimate personal history of how a large immigrant family with four sons in the military coped with the daily traumas of World War II. Each of the major and minor plots relates to larger questions in American social history of the 1930s and 1940s, offering fresh insights about family history, gender relations, ethnic and immigration history, and everyday life on the home front. The book also fills a gap in military history by providing detailed information about soldiers stationed in the United States during the war.

Hunger Disease (Current concepts in nutrition, vol. 7)

Martha Osnos

Wiley · 1979

A translation from the Polish of a manuscript smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto that details studies performed by resident Jewish physicians on patients suffering from starvation. Topics include: clinical changes in adults and children, metabolic adaptations, circulatory changes, changes in the eye and in vision, changes in the blood and bone marrow, and pathologic anatomy.

I Lived Under Hitler: An Englishwoman's Story of Her Life in Wartime Germany

Sybil Bannister

Penguin · 1995

In 1933 Sybil Bannister, a young British woman, set up home in Danzig with her new husband, a German medical student. This is an account of the hardship of her war experience. Her marriage broke up, she was separated from her son, and endured Hamburg's bombing raids and the Wuppertal firestorm.

Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941

Michael A. Barnhart

Cornell University Press · 1991

The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Historian Michael Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security. Drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources, this is the first English-language book on the war's origins to be based on research in archives on both sides of the Pacific. Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan. At a time of growing interest in U.S.-Japanese economic relations, this book will be stimulating and provocative reading for scholars and students of international relations and American and Asian history.

Japan's Gestapo: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia

Mark Felton

Pen & Sword Military · 2009

Japan's military and secret police, the Kempetai, carried out a reign of terror against captive Asian nations, Allied POWs, and Japanese citizens throughout World War II. This history explains the origins, command structure, and role of the Kempetai apparatus, revealing their criminal and collaborationist networks. It examines biological and chemical experiments on live subjects, the gulags for POWs, and slave labor, including the so-called "comfort women," as well as their campaign of revenge after the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo. Calling their actions genocide on a grand scale, the author backs up his text with firsthand testimonies from survivors.

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944 (Studies in Russian and East European History and Society)

John Barber

Palgrave Macmillan · 2005

From 1941-1944 Leningrad saw by far the largest-scale famine ever to occur in a developed society. This book examines the nature and consequences of the extreme conditions created by the German blockade of Leningrad between September 1941 and January 1944. Using declassified documents from Party and State archives in Moscow and St Petersburg and interviews with survivors, the authors have produced the most informed and detailed analysis to date of the impact of the siege on the lives and health of the people of Leningrad.

Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War

C.B.A. Behrens

This book is perhaps the most little read and yet at the same time the most important official history you will read about WW2. If you really want to understand the nature of second world war an understanding of how management of merchant shipping and the control of port clearance is essential. In most areas of the war FDR relegated management to his military commanders. The only aspect of the war which he maintained direct control of was the 'War Shipping Administration, such was its importance to Allied strategy. The 'Germany First' strategy was not a choice, but something forced upon the US Army. Eisehnower pointed out in a very influential paper that a campaign in the Pacific would take 4 times as many ships as a campaign Europe and that it was the shortage of shipping load that determined strategy. Many of the highly complex tables and appedencies have been removed from this edition to make it readable on smaller, A5 size readers