Jon E. Lewis

War, as the general said, is hell. But in a few it also brings out the best. Heroism and horror are the keynotes of this gripping new collection of war writing. From the Siege of Troy to the present day, The Mammoth Book of True War Stories includes battle analyses by celebrated historians, letters home by ordinary Gis, high-adrenaline memoirs by frontline combatants and memorable reportage by master chroniclers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Reed.

It was going to be the greatest amphibious operation of all time claimed Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the naval commander of the Allied invasion of Normandy. He did not exaggerate, for the Allied fleet consisted of over 5,000 craft and had by the end of 'the longest day' landed 156,000 men and breached Hitler's much vaunted defensive wall. Yet dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were just the opening round of a much bigger and equally remarkable battle for the whole of Normandy that followed for the next ten weeks. Sixty years on, this collection of rare, first-hand accounts tells the story of D-Day and the subsequent battle, in the words of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the war. There are classic soldiers' accounts from the likes of Rommel and Bradley, together with front line reports by the best war correspondents such as Hemingway and Alan Melville.

Native Americans make up less than one per cent of the total US population but represent half the nation's languages and cultures. Here, in one grand sweep, is the full story of Native American society, culture and religion. Here is everything from the land-based spirituality of their early creation myths and the late rise of Indian Pride, to the 88 uses to which the Sioux put the flesh and bones of the buffalo and the practice of berdache (men adopted as women). The book offers a chronological history of America's indigenous peoples. It covers their dramatic early entry into North America, out of the now submerged continent of Beringia, then in more recent times the 'forgotten wars' of the 16th and 17th centuries, which wiped many tribes from the face of the East Coast, and finally describes to the last struggles of the Cheyenne and the Comanche. Celebrating these peoples' way of life rather than focusing narrowly on the manner of their genocide, it does not ignore uncomfortable facts of the Amerindian past - including the cannibalism believed to have been practised by some tribes and the Native Americans' part in the decimation of North America's buffalo herds.