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Reading lists

Auschwitz remembered: Jack Fairweather’s essential reading on the Holocaust

The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz – Costa Book of the Year 2019

The Volunteer

The first account of one of the greatest heroes of WWII, and a gripping story of defiance, rebellion, sabotage and escape from a Nazi death camp

Totally gripping … A fascinating, revelatory and surreal WWII story of almost incredible courage and unspeakable horror – how a Polish resistance fighter helped reveal the secret of the final solution from inside Auschwitz

A remarkable book. Fairweather’s account is often harrowing; but it is an important account of the suffering and tragedy in Nazi death camps, told using many previously unpublished sources - and from a new perspective.

Well-researched, well-written and searingly memorable, Jack Fairweather’s book reminds us of the capacity for nobility in the human soul in times of unimaginable peril

Andrew Roberts, bestselling author of ‘Churchill: Walking with Destiny’

Few books have enthralled, incensed and haunted me as “The Volunteer” has done. There were times I felt compelled to set it aside. There were others when hours of reading passed in what felt like moments … This is a story that has long deserved a robust, faithful telling, and he has delivered it

Superbly written and breathtakingly researched … a story of incalculable value delivered in the most compelling prose I have read in a long time

Sebastian Junger, #1 New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist

What distinguishes The Volunteer is Fairweather’s meticulous attention to accuracy … if it sometimes seems as though there is nothing left to uncover about the Holocaust, Fairweather’s gripping book proves otherwise

Combines the verve of a thriller with the detailed evidence of the sober, hideous truth

A searing account … a fitting memorial to one of Poland’s greatest war heroes and a shaming indictment of the western allies’ failure to act

A forceful narrative with unstoppable reading momentum, Fairweather has created an insightful biography of a covert war hero and an extraordinary contribution to the history of the Holocaust.

Witold Pilecki is one of the great—perhaps the greatest—unsung heroes of the second world war ... Jack Fairweather's meticulous and insightful book is likely to be the definitive version of this extraordinary life

An outstanding achievement ... a harrowing tale, revealing the depths of human depravity, redeemed by the shining courage and nobility of one of humanity's heroes.

Patrick Bishop, bestselling author FIGHTER BOYS

A riveting account of human heroism in the face of overwhelming odds … Fairweather’s storytelling is simply masterful

Jon-Lee Anderson, writer for the New Yorker

Impossible to believe if it were not so meticulously researched … a page-turner, a remarkable inside-view of the Holocaust, and also as a testament to all that is best in the human spirit

Mark Bowden, bestselling author of BLACK HAWK DOWN

As riveting as any page-turner and as profound as any great work of literature as it reveals humanity’s capacity for both courage and savagery

Elliot Ackerman, ex-Marine, novelist and finalist for the National Book Award

Witold Pilecki is one of the unsung heroes of World War II. Jack Fairweather has brought Pilecki's story to life with a rich array of primary sources that reveal his role alerting the world to Auschwitz's horrors and its transformation from a concentration camp to the epicenter of the Holocaust. In doing so, Fairweather reminds us that the Nazi leadership didn't start the war with the idea of the Holocaust fully formed - its policy emerged through a series of experiments in mass murder, which Pilecki was able to witness and report on with remarkable courage and tenacity.

Antony Polonsky, Chief Historian, Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Full of vignettes and deftly drawn characters ... the story of Witold Pilecki has long been crying out for a sensitive, circumspect retelling, which would do just to the man and the to the trying times in which he lived. The Volunteer fulfils those criteria admirably

Jack Fairweather's remarkable book shows why [Pilecki's] courageous efforts to alert the world to what was happening in Auschwitz deserve to be remembered everywhere

Picked as one of the best books of 2019 so far

An inspiring story beautifully told

Fairweather tells this tragic tale in gripping fashion, bringing a new angle to the literature of the Holocaust

Brilliantly researched, Jack Fairweather's book is both gripping and powerfully written - a riveting and deeply moving tale of courage in the face of unimaginable horror

One of the Sunday Times paperbacks of the Year 2020 
One of the Financial Times best books of 2020 
 
 'Totally gripping'-- Simon Sebag Montefiore 
 
'Pilecki is perhaps one of the greatest unsung heroes of the second world war ... this insightful book is likely to be the definitive version of this extraordinary life' -- Economist 
 
 
Would you sacrifice yourself to save thousands of others? 
 
 
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 interned 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 plans. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities out of Auschwitz. 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 to draw on unpublished family papers, newly released archival documents and exclusive interviews with surviving resistance fighters to show how he brought the fight to the Nazis at the heart of their evil designs. 
 
The result is an enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man's attempt to change the course of history.

Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan

The Good War

A searing look at the true cost of America’s ‘good war’ in Afghanistan

An excellent account. The outline of Fairweather’s story is sadly familiar, but he writes with exceptional lucidity and punch… No British officer should be allowed to board a plane for our next war until he has read Fairweather’s account of how we messed up the last one.

Jack Fairweather’s sweeping account, The Good War, is one of the first to look at the war as a whole… His richly narrated history roams from the corridors of the White House to the poppy palaces of the country’s opium warlords and the patrol bases of Sangin and Kandahar… As the West looks at the chaos of Iraq and Syria and once more considers how to intervene, the sobering warnings of this riveting book are more relevant than ever.

Combines first-hand war reporting with shrewd analysis of the western conduct of the war, [readers] will quickly come to understand what went wrong.

The Good War is a tour de force – a riveting, clear-eyed account of the troubled US-led war in Afghanistan. Jack Fairweather has shown himself to be a narrative historian of the first order. For anyone seeking an honest appraisal of what went wrong and why, this book is a must-read.

Jon Lee Anderson, author of 'The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan'

Anyone wanting to get to grips with Afghanistan today…should start here. It’s a brilliant introduction.

The Good War is the kind of book one would not ordinarily expect to see for decades, encyclopedic in sweep and yet rich with colorful detail… This timely, absorbing narrative captures the essence of an infuriating place, illustrating once again a seemingly unlearnable lesson: There are strict limits to what can be accomplished by force.

Mark Bowden, author of 'Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'

At last, an intrepid war reporter has woven together his insights from the battlefield, the unadorned views of grunts, and the political calculations of Washington to reveal the entire history of the war in Afghanistan. The result is a superb history, compassionate, comprehensive, and eminently readable. Like the best accounts of war, it shows how our aims going into a conflict are all too swiftly undercut by reality on the ground.

Bing West, author of 'The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq'

It has been America’s longest war, yet there is no real history of the conflict in Afghanistan. Now this war has finally found its chronicler. Jack Fairweather has reported deeply from the White House Situation Room to the deserts of Kandahar to tell a riveting story with an outsized cast of characters. It's a sweeping work of history written with great verve.

Peter Bergen, author of 'Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad'

A forensic account of the war in Afghanistan, this book is essential for anyone wishing to understand the conflict.

Authoritative, wide-ranging and thoroughly readable.

The Good War…can feel one step away from the action but is no less compelling or valuable. His is a chronology of a war of our time; it holds one’s attention and he has done his research.

A timely lesson in the perils of nation-building and a sobering reminder of the limits of military power from the Costa Award winning author of The Volunteer. 
 
In its earliest days, the American-led war in Afghanistan appeared to be a triumph - a ‘good war’ in comparison to the debacle in Iraq. It has since turned into one of the longest and most expensive wars in recent history. The story of how this good war went so bad may well turn out to be a defining tragedy of the twenty-first century - yet, as acclaimed war correspondent Jack Fairweather explains, it should also give us reason to hope for an outcome grounded in Afghan reality. 
 
 In The Good War, Fairweather provides the first full narrative history of the war in Afghanistan, from the 2001 invasion to the 2014 withdrawal. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, previously unpublished archives, and months of experience living and reporting in Afghanistan, Fairweather traces the course of the conflict from its inception after 9/11 to the drawdown in 2014. In the process, he explores the righteous intentions and astounding hubris that caused the West’s strategy in Afghanistan to flounder, refuting the long-held notion that the war could have been won with more troops and cash. Fairweather argues that only by accepting the limitations in Afghanistan - from the presence of the Taliban to the ubiquity of poppy production to the country’s inherent unsuitability for rapid, Western-style development - can we help to restore peace in this shattered land. 
 
 The Good War leads readers from the White House Situation Room to Afghan military outposts, from warlords’ palaces to insurgents’ dens, to explain how the US and its British allies might have salvaged the Afghan campaign - and how we must rethink other ‘good’ wars in the future.

The British in Iraq

A War of Choice: Honour, Hubris and Sacrifice

The remarkable, true story of Britain's role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by an award-winning journalist.

Sound, vivid and enhanced by his modesty - there is no "as the bullets flew around my head" here. He simply describes in cool prose how Britain's share in the western allies' initial 2003 success in deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq tuned into a nightmare struggle against insurgency

It makes for one of the best histories of the aftermath of war, and a staggering story of the betrayal of everything it was fought for

A rollercoaster narrative of heroism, mismanagement and disaster... as gripping as any novel

It does what the Chilcot Inquiry should do, but probably won't

A compelling history of the seamy realities of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it combines the vivideness of front-line reporting with detached and incisive analysis. A War of Choice should become the definitive account of this era

The calamitous decision-making process that sent Britain into the "perfect storm" of fighting two wars on two fronts is brilliantly catalogued in Jack Fairweather's excellent book, A War of Choice

Fairweather deftly combines history, analysis and reportage to give a rational and dispassionate account of Britain's war... While A War of Choice is by no means the first book about the war in Iraq, nor even about Britain in Iraq, it is surely one of the finest. It is a compelling and sober exploration of Britain's controversial foreign policy in the Middle East, and, most importantly, it is fantastically readable.

We have needed to have a detailed and dispassionate book on Britain's bitterly controversial war in Iraq. At last we have it with this powerful, sweeping account.

A compelling history of the seamy realities of war in both Iraq &amp; Afghanistan, it combines the vividness of front-line reporting with detached and incisive analysis. A War of Choice should become a definitive account of this era, setting out the case against Tony Blair's shifty manipulations in Iraq more forcefully than any number of official enquiries will do.

Britain's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have spawned a new generation of war correspondents as brave and fluent as any that went before, many of whom go on to write books. Jack Fairweather, who reported from Baghdad for The Daily Telegraph, has compiled his own account, which is sound, vivid and [...] simply describes in cool prose how Britain's share in the western allies' initial 2003 success in deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq turned into a nightmare struggle against insurgency.

Jack Fairweather, the accomplished correspondent of the Daily Telegraph for much of the Iraq venture, gives a brilliant summary of the British entanglement for the fourth time in that country in A War of Choice... It should provide an ideal introduction to the forthcoming, and much delayed, report about British involvement in Iraq by the Chilcot committee. That inquiry should finally lay bare who took the decisions for what, who knew what and at what time, and who should take responsibility. It won't do all that, we know already, because Sir John Chilcot himself has said he won't apportion blame. He should, and the fact he won't means we will have to rely on Jack Fairweather's pithy analysis for a long time ahead.

The calamitous decision-making process that sent Britain into the "perfect storm" of fighting two wars on two fronts is brilliantly catalogued in Jack Fairweather's excellent book A War of Choice. Through more than 300 interviews, Fairweather, a former Daily Telegraph correspondent in Iraq, expertly dissects the lies, spin and appalling decision-making which led to the biggest British foreign policy disaster since the Suez Crisis.

A gripping account of the moral and political challenges posed by the Iraq war from the Costa Award winning author of The Volunteer 
 
When Tony Blair plunged Britain into war he thought that, shortly thereafter, Iraq would emerge as a peaceful democracy. Instead the invasion sparked the worst foreign policy disaster since the Suez crisis in 1956. 
 
A War of Choice is a compelling and authoritative portrayal of Britain's war in Iraq. At the outset, Blair insisted that Britain went to war to influence American decision-making. Based on over three hundred interviews, A War of Choice gives the inside story of Blair's war cabinet, Whitehall power struggles and intrigue at the White House, and traces the evolution of the special relationship, from the secret deals struck by Blair, to Brown's desperate bid to save his premiership, which brought already-strained relations with America to the verge of collapse. 
 
A story of hubris and honour, betrayal and the ultimate sacrifice, A War of Choice provides powerful insight into one of Britain’s most controversial conflicts. 
 
‘A timely work that offers a considered appraisal of what went wrong’ Times Literary Supplement

The British in Iraq 2003-9

A War of Choice

A compelling and authoritative first-hand portrayal of Britain's war in Iraq.

Britain's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have spawned a new generation of war correspondents as brave and fluent as any that went before, many of whom go on to write books. Jack Fairweather, who reported from Baghdad for The Daily Telegraph, has compiled his own account, which is sound, vivid and [...] simply describes in cool prose how Britain's share in the western allies' initial 2003 success in deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq turned into a nightmare struggle against insurgency

Jack Fairweather, the accomplished correspondent of the Daily Telegraph for much of the Iraq venture, gives a brilliant summary of the British entanglement for the fourth time in that country in A War of Choice... It should provide an ideal introduction to the forthcoming, and much delayed, report about British involvement in Iraq by the Chilcot committee. That inquiry should finally lay bare who took the decisions for what, who knew what and at what time, and who should take responsibility. It won't do all that, we know already, because Sir John Chilcot himself has said he won't apportion blame. He should, and the fact he won't means we will have to rely on Jack Fairweather's pithy analysis for a long time ahead

The calamitous decision-making process that sent Britain into the "perfect storm" of fighting two wars on two fronts is brilliantly catalogued in Jack Fairweather's excellent book A War of Choice. Through more than 300 interviews, Fairweather, a former Daily Telegraph correspondent in Iraq, expertly dissects the lies, spin and appalling decision-making which led to the biggest British foreign policy disaster since the Suez Crisis

A brilliant summary of the British entanglement for the fourth time in that country...It should provide an ideal introduction to the forthcoming, and much delayed, report about British involvement in Iraq by the Chilcot committee.

A well-written and comprehensive history of the war in Iraq from the British perspective, and a timely work that offers a considered appraisal of what went wrong

Jack Fairweather examines our less than glorious role

Fairweather deftly combines history, analysis and reportage to give a rational and dispassionate account of Britain's war... While A War of Choice is by no means the first book about the war in Iraq, nor even about Britain in Iraq, it is surely one of the finest. It is a compelling and sober exploration of Britain's controversial foreign policy in the Middle East, and, most importantly, it is fantastically readable

When Tony Blair plunged Britain into war he thought that, shortly thereafter, Iraq would emerge as a peaceful democracy. Instead the invasion sparked the worst foreign policy disaster since the Suez crisis in 1956. 
 
A War of Choice is a compelling and authoritative portrayal of Britain's war in Iraq. At the outset, Blair insisted that Britain went to war to influence American decision-making. Based on over three hundred interviews, A War of Choice gives the inside story of Blair's war cabinet, Whitehall power struggles and intrigue at the White House, and traces the evolution of the special relationship, from the secret deals struck by Blair, to Brown's desperate bid to save his premiership, which brought already-strained relations with America to the verge of collapse. 
 
The occupation of Iraq also marked an extraordinary attempt to introduce democracy into the heart of the Muslim world. Fairweather takes us inside the doomed effort in Basra, where civil servants and trigger-happy contractors lived in a holiday camp atmosphere in Saddam's former palace, while British troops struggled against a raging insurgency and Iranian agents and Iraqi tribesmen plotted the occupation's downfall. Tony Blair compounded the blunders in Iraq when he launched a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan in 2006. Fairweather follows a small group of officers and diplomats as they try to learn the lessons of liberal intervention in time to avert a disaster in Helmand and a humiliating surrender in Basra. 
 
A story of hubris and honour, betrayal and the ultimate sacrifice, A War of Choice is a gripping account of the moral and political challenges posed by the last ten years of war. Posing the question 'can nation-building defeat terrorism?' the new government would do well to take heed. 
 
Tony Blair always claimed that history would judge his decision to invade Iraq. This is it.

A gripping account of the moral and political challenges posed by the Iraq war from the Costa Award winning author of The Volunteer. 
 
When Tony Blair plunged Britain into war he thought that, shortly thereafter, Iraq would emerge as a peaceful democracy. Instead the invasion sparked the worst foreign policy disaster since the Suez crisis in 1956. 
 
 A War of Choice is a compelling and authoritative portrayal of Britain's war in Iraq. At the outset, Blair insisted that Britain went to war to influence American decision-making. Based on over three hundred interviews, A War of Choice gives the inside story of Blair's war cabinet, Whitehall power struggles and intrigue at the White House, and traces the evolution of the special relationship, from the secret deals struck by Blair, to Brown's desperate bid to save his premiership, which brought already-strained relations with America to the verge of collapse. 
 
 A story of hubris and honour, betrayal and the ultimate sacrifice, A War of Choice provides powerful insight into one of Britain’s most controversial conflicts. 
 
‘A timely work that offers a considered appraisal of what went wrong’ Times Literary Supplement

Jack Fairweather

FIVE STARS --Not all superheroes wear capes. Some, as Jack Fairweather’s superb biography of the German prosecutor and judge Fritz Bauer shows, wear lawyer’s robes instead ... This is a magnificent book

Fairweather tells this story with impressive clarity and pace… compulsively readable… with liberal democracies once more imperilled and indifference to the Holocaust stupefyingly widespread, The Prosecutor could hardly be more timely

Deeply humane, finely wrought and so vital tale in this age of impunity, crackingly told

Philippe Sands, award-winning and bestselling author of THE RATLINE and EAST WEST STREET

Gripping and well-researched ... Fairweather’s book would be haunting to read at any time; it is especially bitter today

One of the great untold stories of the Holocaust— and Jack Fairweather is the perfect person to tell it

Jonathan Freedland, bestselling author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST

A tour-de-force of both historical research and absolutely terrific writing... the book itself reads like the best sort of cloak-and-dagger novel... this book was a kind of masterclass

Sebastian Junger, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE PERFECT STORM and TRIBE

This is a book of great importance. The Prosecutor is, quite simply, a stunning achievement.

Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara and New Yorker staff writer

Beautifully written and hugely evocative... a powerful literary memorial to Fritz Bauer, the German-Jewish lawyer whose tenacity forced a nation to confront its crimes

Katja Hoyer, bestselling author of BEYOND THE WALL

Jack Fairweather continues his stellar writing career with an important new book... this well-researched, well-written and hard-hitting book could not be more timely

Andrew Roberts, author of CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY

A gripping and timely tale of a modest man who sacrificed his life to expose a collective guilt... In dark times, his sacrifice provides a bright beacon of light

A rich, compelling and deeply researched account of a little-known lawyer who fought long and hard to expose the criminals who underpinned Hitler’s monstrous regime. Another page-turner from Jack Fairweather

Giles Milton, bestelling author of THE STALIN AFFAIR

Brilliantly captures the poignant and insightful story of one lonely, determined man’s quest to bring Nazis to justice for the Holocaust...This is history not to be missed

David E. Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of THE DEAD HAND and GIVE ME LIBERTY

Jack Fairweather, a brilliant researcher and compelling writer, tells the remarkable and inspiring story of German jurist Fritz Bauer [who] braved public opprobrium and personal danger to pursue the complicit and compel a national reckoning with its crimes. A triumphant story.

Breathtaking scholarship delivered with a compelling flair for storytelling – returns the seminal figure of the courageous Fritz Bauer to his rightful place at the centre of our collective reckoning with the Nazis’ crimes

Robert Jan van Pelt, award-winning writer and leading Holocaust expert

This meticulously researched and well written biography brings to life one of the unsung heroes of the twentieth century…. Fairweather brilliantly evokes the dark, morally ambiguous atmosphere of postwar Germany and a man whose story... contains the moral lessons we need today

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-prize winning, bestselling author

Disturbing insights into a bygone era. . . . Stirring revelations of an unsung hero of postwar Germany

Despite the number of Holocaust-related titles that now appear in the book trade, there is usually one specific book that becomes a beacon, or flagship for the genre. The Prosecutor could very well be seen as that in the years to come… takes the reader on a page-turning adventure… paints a vivid picture of a man in a hurry to bear witness to mass-murder… Jack Fairweather has achieved something quite remarkable

One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice

WINNER of 75th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award: Biography 
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize 2026 
 
‘FIVE STARS … Magnificent’ Telegraph 
‘Compulsively readable’ Financial Times 
‘Gripping and timely’ The Times 
'Crackingly told' Philippe Sands 
'A kind of masterclass' Sebastian Junger 
 
 
THE NEW BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING, COSTA PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE VOLUNTEER 
 
The true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after WWII to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past. 
 
At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. 
 
In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay German Jew who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the dark, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler’s former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer lands on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he won’t be intimidated. His journey takes him deep into the rotten heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice will set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies determined to silence him. 
 
In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man’s courage in forcing his people––and the world––to face the truth.

Jack Fairweather

Books by Jack Fairweather

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Auschwitz remembered: Jack Fairweather’s essential reading on the Holocaust

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