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Concise Historical Atlas of World War Two: The Geography of Conflict

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Story's Concise Historical Atlas is an excellent overview of the war, probably the best brief treatment I've seen. The maps are clear, brightly colored. Most of them are easy to grasp. The main battles and campaigns are well covered. There also are some nice surprises, such as continental Africa, Spain, the Chinese Communist Long March, the building of the bomb, and the Japanese camp system, that war surveys don't usually include. The maps stretch over a huge 50-year period, which is a big help in conveying the roots and consequences of the war. The commentaries that go with each map are also good. The writing is crisp, with lots of good basic information, useful insights. They have a dramatic quality that's quite powerful and makes you want to keep turning the pages. Some people might think there's too much coverage of the Eastern Front and mainland Asia, and there are a few errors and typos that need to be corrected in a future edition. Overall, though, a successful effort. Oxford is to be commended.

In depicting the most wide-ranging conflict in human history, one of the greatest challenges for any historian of the Second World War is the one of making the conflict accessible - a challenge that is even greater when that person is seeking to offer a "concise" account. In this respect, Ronald Story's effort is a modest success. In this book he offers fifty maps detailing various aspects of the conflict, from Europe immediately prior to the First World War to Asia after the second one. Each is accompanied on the opposite page with text that provides a short summary and analysis of the subject of the map; when combined they offer a short, accessible overview of the conflict from its early 20th century origins to its mid-century consequences.

While a good starting point for readers seeking an introduction to the conflict, the atlas also has something for more knowledgeable students of the war as well. The maps themselves are clear, colorful, and easy to read, providing a nice supplement for anyone frustrated with the paucity or illegibility of maps in other books on the war. For the most part, the maps focus on the strategic and political aspects of the war. Only six battles (El Alamein, Kursk, the Battle of the Bulge, Berlin, Midway, and Leyte Gulf) receive dedicated maps, and even these are short on details that can be found elsewhere. Europe receives the majority of the attention; though the Eastern Front is fairly well covered, the bulk of the maps dealing with the war in Asia focus largely on the Allies' "island-hopping" campaigns. Nevertheless, for those readers seeking a handy overview of the "geography of the conflict" (as the subtitle advertises), this a good book to get.