Two officers made home runs via a tunnel dug in the open air beneath a wooden vaulting horse from Stalag Luft III.

The author, a Royal Air Force bomber captain, was shot down over Germany in 1942 and imprisoned in Stalag-Luft III (site of the 'Great Escape' later in the war). He escaped after 10 months and, accompanied by a fellow RAF officer, made his way back to England. He relates his story in three distinct phases: the construction of a tunnel (its entrance camouflaged by the wooden vaulting horse in the exercise yard) and hiding the large quantities of sand he dug; the escape; and the journey on foot and by train to the port of Stettin, where Williams and his fellow escapee stowed away aboard a Danish ship, the Norensen.

The story of the flight across Germany is particularly tense, as Williams relates how their clothing and fabricated travel papers became shabbier and more conspicuous. This classic escape-and-evasion story, an exciting read and is arguably the most ingenious POW escape of WWII. The Wooden Horse became a legend among servicemen long before its publication in 1949.

It was famously filmed by Jack Lee, starring David Tomlinson, Anthony Steel, Bryan Forbes and Peter Finch....

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.

Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared....