We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that you can now order paperback copies of Eden’s Alternative to Appeasement by Malcolm Murfett, if you live in the UK or USA. Just click the link below to order your copy at a 20% discount — £20/$28 plus p&p.
We’re expecting the book to also be available from all the major online retailers (and available to order from bookshops) imminently, but it takes a few days for data to cascade through the system. I’ll keep updating as this progresses, particularly once it’s available to order through sites that deliver to other countries. In the meantime the ebook is widely available, although yet to reach Amazon Kindle.
I’m in the process of arranging a hardback copy as well, for any organisations that might want a more durable copy for their shelves. More on that once it’s ready, likely in a few weeks’ time.
We have some plans for the coming weeks to promote the book and to give you a sense of why we think it’s so great. In the meantime I thought I’d write a few words about the project and what I think makes it a worthwhile read.
Our readers have described the book as “reading like a thriller” and “an impressive and urgent read which has echoes for contemporary events”. In many respects this sums up its appeal very well, Malcolm follows events closely over a period of a few months, with a relatively small cast of major characters making huge decisions with implications for war and peace on a scale we understand all too well. At the same time, he also captures the sense of constrained action, the reasons why — in the moment — other decisions weren’t really either practical, or politically viable, or were simply too risky. There is tremendous moral and strategic appeal to the idea of the Democracies giving one of the Dictatorships a bloody nose, to show that they should be taken seriously, and that they could not be relied on to back down in the face of aggression. As Malcolm shows, that this did not happen was at least as much a consequence of logistics, risk management, and political capital as it was one of courage or political will.
The echoes that resonate with our own contemporary geopolitics are legion, but the one that struck me the most was the sense of the overlapping challenges of what is practically possible, what is politically tenable, and the opportunity costs of taking major actions. Individuals, their actions and decisions definitely mattered, but they were constrained by various diplomatic, political and logistical realities, some of which were mutable to a degree, others of which were not. The US’s recent actions in Iran, to draw a counterpoint, illustrate the problem with simply deciding to take aggressive military action in spite of the predictable strategic consequences of doing so. The two examples are of course very different in many ways, but these contemporary actions do serve to remind us that strategic risks are real, and it is not necessarily cowardice to choose not to act in order to avoid the possibility of catastrophic consequences.
Perhaps more importantly, though, is that Malcolm’s text here, as with his previous books, is a pleasure to read. While maintaining a high degree of scholarship and always being clear about his sources, he does not stand entirely apart from events as a neutral observer. With a light touch, he tells us what objectively happened while giving us a sense of the personalities and foibles involved. They are real people, with flaws and blind spots, but also with ideals and ambitions, trying to do the right thing under considerable pressure and constraint, and not always agreeing on what that right thing is.
Those are my two cents anyway. Go and read it for yourselves and by all means come back and tell me you disagree!
If you would like to order multiple copies of Eden’s Alternative to Appeasement please email us at orders@tbarnpress.com and we can arrange this for you at a discount just about anywhere in the world.
If you would be interested in reviewing Eden’s Alternative to Appeasement please get in touch at admin@tbarnpress.com.
Finally, as always, if this has inspired you to submit your own book proposal to us, please email us at proposals@tbarnpress.com.
