Customer Reviews

The Everything World War II Book: People, Places, Battles, and All the Key Events (Everything (History & Travel))

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The latest in the Everything series of comprehensive reference books, The Everything World War II Book: People, Places, Battles, And All The Key Events is a "reader friendly" compendium written for all ages, and covers just about everything there is to know about World War II. The war's battles, profiles of the major leaders, military strategies, women's contributions and the War Crimes Trials are just a few of the issues surveyed in clear, easy-to-understand and highly informative language. An excellent basic reference to the war that changed how the world would forever after think of war, The Everything World War II Book is very highly recommended for school and community library American History reference collections.

This is a laughably stupid concept (the title alone should raise a few red flags), but it's executed even worse than it needed to be. For instance, just to pick something at random: the Japanese occupation of Korea receives nary a single mention. The very first reference to Korea is made on Aug. 12, 1945, and it's about the Allied forces dividing up the peninsula along the 38th parallel. Call me picky, but I thought this was a book about WWII. There are literally hundreds of major (and insulting) omissions like this. Some may not see the merit in judging this text based on what isn't there rather than what is, but I think it's a fair criticism of a book that purports to cover "everything" about what is arguably the defining event of the twentieth century in 352 pages (including the index). You could retitle this book, "Everything about U.S. involvement in the European theater during World War II," and it would still be woefully lacking.