Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness is a re-examination of the life and thoughts of Jan Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary readership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. The author, a former editor of The Star, argues that Smut's role in the creation of modern South Africa should never be forgotten, not least because of his lifetime of devoted service to this country. The book draws a parallel between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both architects of a new South Africa, much lionised abroad yet often distrusted at home. This highly readable account of Smut's eventful life blends fact, anecdote and opinion in an examination of his complex character, his relationships with women, spiritual and intellectual life and role as advisor to world leaders. Politics and international affairs receive the most attention, but Smut's unique contributions in a variety of other fields, including botany, conservation and philosophy, also receive attention. Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness does not shy away from the contradictions of its subject. Smuts was one of the architects of the United Nations and a great champion of human rights, yet he could not come to terms with the need to include the African majority in the politics of his own country.

‘A just biography of an important figure—political philosopher, soldier in three wars, scientist, statesman—Jan Smuts, who has played a long and decisive role in the formation and consolidation of South Africa. Masterful, energetic, intolerant, often highhanded, Smuts has never been a popular leader, but never once did he deviate from his conception of a united South Africa within the British Empire. Before his Premiership and after, he was to fight steadily against the opposition, the Nationalists, who demanded complete severance from Britain. Other problems of the Indians, of labor rebellion, of industrial unrest, objectively presented. During the First World War, his ruthless leadership in action in East Africa; his important part in world affairs as representative in the British War Cabinet; and later his plan for the League of Nations. He fell from power in 1924, as the anti-British Hertzog came in; he was recalled at 70 to head his country at war for the third time, which he has accomplished with equal severity and decisiveness. ‘Sound, factual biography...’ (Kirkus)

On the afternoon of Monday 4 June 1900, the young State Attorney of the South African Republic bade a sad farewell to his wife and child whom he was never to see again and left Pretoria to join the Boer commandos. He had braved shot and shell to put the government's sole source of finance for the continuing war - less than half a million pounds sterling in gold and coins - on a special train to President Kruger in the Eastern Transvaal. The next day, Lord Robert's army entered the capital. Jan Smuts came to play an important role in the South African war of 1899-1902. His memoirs are recorded here, and they present an account of the critical events from the fall of Pretoria to the reorganization of the commandos in December that year.

Like Paul Kruger at the end of the nineteenth century, and Nelson Mandela as the twentieth century drew to a close, it was Jan Smuts who stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century; he was a leader of extraordinary stature and his statesmanship is recognised internationally. Many of the biographies and other works on Smuts appeared during his lifetime or soon after his death. Today, a few generations later, we have a better perspective on his contributions within the historical context of his time.

"A Century of Wrong" is a historical novel. At the advent of the South African War (Second Anglo-Boer War), Francis William Reitz, in his capacity of State Secretary of the South African Republic, published an overview of Anglo-Boer relations in the nineteenth century in Dutch, under the title "A Century of Wrong". The book was an important propaganda document in the war. Reitz defends the Dutch from what he terms as wrong accusations of Dutch Boer brutality against the natives of the Transvaal Region. He in turn counters with a history of British aggression against the Dutch migrants in the South African Republic.

Brought together first as enemies in the Anglo-Boer War, and later as allies in the First World War, the remarkable, and often touching, friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts. In youth they occupied very different worlds: Churchill, the rambunctious and thrusting young aristocrat; Smuts, the aesthetic, philosophical Cape farm boy who would go on to Cambridge. Both were men of exceptional talents and achievements and, between them, the pair had to grapple with some of the twentieth century's most intractable issues, not least of which the task of restoring peace and prosperity to Europe after two of mankind's bloodiest wars. Drawing on a maze of archival and secondary sources including letters, telegrams and the voluminous books written about both men, Richard Steyn presents a fascinating account of two remarkable men in war and peace: one the leader of the Empire, the other the leader of a small fractious member of that Empire who nevertheless rose to global prominence.

A new assessment of Jan Smuts’s military leadership through examination of his World War I campaigning, demonstrating that he was a gifted general, conversant with the craft of maneuver warfare, and a command style steeped in the experiences of his time as a Boer general. World War I ushered in a renewed scramble for Africa. At its helm, Jan Smuts grabbed the opportunity to realize his ambition of a Greater South Africa. He set his sights upon the vast German colonies of South-West Africa and East Africa – the demise of which would end the Kaiser’s grandiose schemes for Mittelafrika. As part of his strategy to shift South Africa’s borders inexorably northward, Smuts even cast an eye toward Portuguese and Belgian African possessions. Smuts, his abilities as a general much denigrated by both his contemporary and then later modern historians, was no armchair soldier. This cabinet minister and statesman donned a uniform and led his men into battle. He learned his soldiery craft under General Koos De la Rey's tutelage, and another soldier-statesman, General Louis Botha during the South African War 1899–1902. He emerged from that war, immersed in the Boer maneuver doctrine he devastatingly waged in the guerrilla phase of that conflict. His daring and epic invasion of the Cape at the head of his commando remains legendary. The first phase of the German South West African campaign and the Afrikaner Rebellion in 1914 placed his abilities as a sound strategic thinker and a bold operational planner on display. Champing at the bit, he finally had the opportunity to command the Southern Forces in the second phase of the German South West African campaign. Placed in command of the Allied forces in East Africa in 1916, he led a mixed bag of South Africans and Imperial troops against the legendary Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and his Shutztruppe. Using his penchant for Boer maneuver warfare together with mounted infantry led and manned by Boer Republican veterans, he proceeded to free the vast German territory from Lettow-Vorbeck’s grip. Often leading from the front, his operational concepts were an enigma to the British under his command, remaining so to modern-day historians. Although unable to bring the elusive and wily Lettow-Vorbeck to a final decisive battle, Smuts conquered most of the territory by the end of his tenure in February 1917. General Jan Smuts and His First World War in Africa makes use of multiple archival sources and the official accounts of all the participants to provide a long-overdue reassessment of Smuts’s generalship and his role in furthering the strategic aims of South Africa and the British Empire in Africa during World War I.