Norman Stone

This comprehensive review of Turkey's health care system shows that health status has improved rapidly in Turkey in recent decades, partly as a result of higher health spending. It describes the introduction of an ambitious Health Transformation Program in 2003 which brought universal health insurance to Turkey in 2008 and has begun the process of public hospital reforms and the rolling out of family-practitioner services throughout the country. Challenges remain, however, including completing the Health Transformation Program and ensuring that the new health system provides value for money and stays affordable. This report analyzes these challenges and sets out policy suggestions aimed at addressing them.--Publisher's description.

This groundbreaking study was the first authoritative account of the Russian Front in the First World War to be published in the West and is now reissued with a new introduction by the author. The battles fought on the Eastern Front were decisive to the course of the war. As well as reconstructing these events, Norman Stone explores the factors that influenced their outcome and draws some unexpected conclusions. Dispelling the popular myth of an economically crippled Russia, he argues that the country was, in fact, going through a period of unprecedented economic growth. Tsarist Russia's weakness lay in its outdated administration which resulted in war shortages and an inefficient army. In a fascinating reinterpretation of the connection between the war and the revolution that followed, he shows that although military events had almost ceased by the end of 1916, Russia was still in turmoil, undergoing a period of modernization which opened the way towards revolution. - Back cover.

"This high-interest series, aimed at reluctant readers, looks at secret campaigns behind the major conflicts of the past 100 years. Biographical sidebars focus on heroic or notorious personalities. Highlighted fact features include special operations and their results, resistance movements, propaganda and the history of the time - as is known....and not readily known"--Provided by publisher.

The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, four empires were destroyed and even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. The sheer complexity and scale of the war have encouraged historians to write books on a similar scale. But now Norman Stone, one of Britain's greatest historians, has achieved the almost impossible task of writing a terse, brilliantly written, opinionated and witty short history of the conflict. In only 140 pages he distils a lifetime of teaching, arguing and thinking into what will be one of the most talked about history books of years to come.