{"product_id":"9780593632079","title":"Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe definitive and surprising true story of one of history’s most notorious prisons—and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their Nazi captors—from the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Spy and the Traitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied captives. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human emotion, from joy to despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—such as the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters, including Birendranath Mazumdar, an Indian doctor whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePrisoners of the Castle\u003c\/i\u003e traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed \u003ci\u003eOperation Mincemeat\u003c\/i\u003e and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true spy stories, Macintyre breathes new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.","brand":"Diversified Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46272250347761,"sku":"9780593632079","price":31.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0674\/5433\/7265\/files\/9780593632079_p0.jpg?v=1765120858","url":"https:\/\/shop.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780593632079","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble","version":"1.0","type":"link"}