Taking Midway-website banner.png
 

MARTIN
DUGARD

New York Times
BestSelling Author

 

The Taking Series

TAKING LONDON

Martin Dugard knows how to make history read with as much pace as the best fiction.
— James Patterson
Dugard has real narrative gifts.
— The Washington Post
Cover of Taking London

From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series — with more than 12 million copies sold — comes a soaring account of England's desperate fight to fend off German invasion.

Great Britain, summer 1940. The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Adolf Hitler's powerful armies control Europe. England stands alone against this juggernaut, the whole world knowing it is only a matter of time before Nazi Germany unleashes its military might on the island nation. In London, a new prime minister named Winston Churchill is determined to defeat the Nazi menace, no matter the costs.

Luckily for Churchill, one quirky Englishman has seen the future. Air Vice-Marshall Hugh Dowding is head of the Royal Air Force Fighter Command. He has spent years preparing his nation's aerial defenses, utilizing the new technology of radar, training hundreds of hand-picked young pilots, and overseeing the design and purchase of the world's most up-to-date fighter aircraft. . . .

Taking London puts the reader inside the action, telling the complex personal sagas of Churchill, Dowding, and legendary fighter pilots like Peter Townsend, Geoffrey Wellum, Richard Hillary, and American Billy Fiske, all set against the defiant backdrop of wartime London. Told in fast-paced, you-are-there fashion, this third book in the epic Taking series will have readers turning the pages late into the night.

Other Books in the Taking Series

Cover of Taking Berlin

From Martin Dugard, author of Taking Paris and the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series, comes a nonfiction thriller about the race between the Allies and Soviets to conquer the heart of Nazi Germany.

Fall, 1944. Paris has been liberated, saved from destruction, but this diversion on the road to Berlin has given the Germans time to regroup. Meanwhile, the Soviets begin to squeeze Hitler’s crumbling Reich from the east. . . .

With a sweeping cast of historical figures, Taking Berlin is a pulse-pounding race into the final, desperate months of the Second World War and toward the fiery destruction of the Thousand-Year-Reich, chronicling a moment in history when allies become adversaries.

Cover of Taking Paris

From Martin Dugard, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series, comes the spellbinding story of the Allied liberation of Paris from the grip of the Nazis during World War II.

May 1940: The world is stunned as Hitler’s forces invade France with a devastating blitzkrieg aimed at Paris. Within weeks, the French government has collapsed, and the City of Lights, revered for its carefree lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and love of liberty, has fallen under Nazi control—perhaps forever.

As the Germans ruthlessly crush all opposition, a patriotic band of Parisians known as the Resistance secretly rise up to fight back. . . .

From the fall of Paris in 1940 to the race for Paris in 1944, this riveting, page-turning drama unfolds through their decisions—for better and worse.

  • Martin Dugard’s spectacular Taking Berlin is nonfiction more captivating than any fiction, offering a fresh and welcome take on the last year of the Second World War, perhaps the most dramatic months in the past century. Truly a work as important as it is entertaining, Taking Berlin is certain to be a massive hit with fans of both history and thrillers alike.”

    — Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sierra Six and The Gray Man series

    With a master storyteller’s faultless pacing, Martin Dugard brings to life all the glory, tension, heroism and tragedy of the last months of the Third Reich. I loved this book—gripping, popular history at its page-turning best.”

    — Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II

  • Taking Paris does for Paris during World War II what ‘The Splendid and the Vile’ did for London. Martin Dugard knows how to make history read with as much pace as the best fiction.

    — James Patterson

    The luminaries of World War II are bought to life and explored in depth as Martin Dugard, a writer extraordinaire, provides the reader with an exciting narrative of the liberation of Paris. Filled with revelatory information, this book is a fast-paced account of the vast resources ultimately applied to the liberation of Paris. The French effort, heretofore untold in the many books on World War II, is explained and celebrated in Dugard’s book. Heroes are aplenty and Dugard’s masterpiece highlights them all.

    — Brian Sobel, author of The Fighting Pattons

    Taking Paris reads like a film script; such is the immediacy of the writing and use of the present tense that you feel yourself in the action, striding up the Champs Elysees liberating the French capital from the Nazis.

    — Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

    Heroes and villains abound. You’ll enjoy this fast-paced book immensely.

    — Bill O'Reilly

ABOUT MARTIN DUGARD

Martin Dugard is the New York Times #1 bestselling author of the Taking series, now available at all book retailers.

In addition, Martin is co-author of the mega-million selling Killing series: Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, Killing Reagan, Killing England, Killing the Rising Sun, Killing the SS, Killing Crazy Horse, and Killing the Mob.

MartinDugard.jpg

Martin is also the author of the critically lauded memoir To Be A Runner, a series of essays which takes the reader around the world as he recounts his personal journey through the world of distance running. It is a book about life itself, and how the simple act of stepping outside for a run is a metaphor for our daily desire to be the best possible version of ourselves, step by step.

This attribute can be seen in the diversity and depth of Martin’s body of work. His writing and research into global exploration resulted in The Explorers (Simon and Schuster, 2013), an engaging narrative about the motivations for pursuing adventure — even at the risk of death.

His ten years covering the Tour de France resulted in Chasing Lance (Little, Brown, 2005) a travelogue combining history, sports and gastronomy.

Other works include the New York Times bestseller The Murder of King Tut (with James Patterson; Little, Brown, 2009); The Last Voyage of Columbus (Little, Brown, 2005), which tells the riveting tale of the legendary Admiral’s final, ill-fated journey in crisp, swashbuckling fashion; Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone (Doubleday, 2003), Farther Than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook (Pocket Books, 2001), Knockdown (Pocket Books, 1999), and Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth (McGraw-Hill, 1998). In addition, Martin lived on the island of Pulau Tiga during the filming of Survivor's inaugural season to write the bestselling Survivor with mega-producer Mark Burnett.

Martin is the writer and producer of A Warrior's Heart, starring Ashley Greene and Kellan Lutz, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011.

An adventurer himself, he regularly immerses himself in his research to understand characters and their motivations better. To better understand Columbus he traveled through Spain, the Caribbean and Central America. For Tut he explored pharaohs' tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. He followed Henry Morton Stanley’s path across Tanzania while researching Into Africa (managing to get thrown into an African prison in the process), and swam in the tiger shark-infested waters of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay to recreate Captain James Cook’s death for Farther Than Any Man. And for To Be A Runner, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona, suffered electric shock and hypothermia as part of Britain's Tough Guy competition, and explored Japanese WWII bunkers on the island of Saipan.

IMG_0218.JPG

On the more personal side of adventure, Martin competed in the Raid Gauloises endurance race three times, and flew around the world at twice the speed of sound aboard an Air France Concorde. The time of 31 hours and 28 minutes set a world record for global circumnavigation. His magazine writing has appeared in Esquire, Outside, Sports Illustrated, and GQ, among others. In 1997, he was awarded the Dallas Area Press Club’s Katie Award for Best Magazine Sports Story.

In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the USA Track & Field Foundation, charged with growing youth distance running in America. 

Martin and his wife live in Orange County, California. They have three sons.

BOOKS

TBAR.jpg

New introduction and additional stories…

Originally published in 2011, To Be a Runner is back with a fresh and exciting update on a running classic. With an exuberant mix of passion, insight, instruction, and humor, bestselling author and lifelong runner Martin Dugard takes a journey through the world of running to illustrate how the sport helps us fulfill that universal desire to be the best possible version of ourselves each and every time we lace up our shoes.

To Be a Runner represents a new way to write about running by bridging the chasm between the two categories of running books: how-to and personal narrative. Spinning colorful stories of his running and racing adventures on six continents, Dugard considers what it means to truly integrate running into one's life. As entertaining as it is provocative, To Be a Runner is about far more than running: It is about life, and how we should live it.

Follow @AuthorMartinDugard on Instagram