Book excerpt: This stunning second volume of wartime speeches and broadcasts from the Nobel Prize–winning prime minister captures the troubled early days of WWII. Legendary politician and military strategist Winston S. Churchill was a master not only of the battlefield, but of the page and the podium. Over the course of forty books and countless speeches, broadcasts, news items, and more, he addressed a country at war and at peace, thrilling with victory but uneasy with its shifting role on the world stage. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” During his lifetime, he enthralled readers and brought crowds roaring to their feet; in the years since his death, his skilled writing has inspired generations of eager history buffs. This second volume in the series of the great orator’s wartime speeches, broadcasts, public messages, and other communications take readers through the difficult years of 1940 to 1941. Faced with a challenging moment for the military as well as a groundswell of criticism from his government and his people, Churchill used his extraordinary command of language to inspire Britain to stand strong against Hitler and the growing Nazi threat. No fan of WWII military history should be without this extraordinary collection of seventy-two broadcasts, speeches, and messages to Parliament.