Customer Reviews

The Library of Congress World War II Companion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very attractive and extensive survey of World War II. It should be invaluable to the student of the period, enlightening to the history enthusiast, and an important reference work for scholars. It has an emphasis on the American experience overall, but adequately covers the relative involvements of all the major national powers (and many minor ones) from the level of private citizens and front-line soldiers, to the generals and leaders of states. There are discussions of individual combat weapons and machines as well as the composition, strategy and movement of entire armed forces. Topics are liberally illustrated with photographs and artwork, and supported with many letters, personal experiences (such as those collected from the Veterans History Project), maps, charts, statistics, and quantitative analyses to help the reader absorb the information.

The text is concise and easy to read, and includes a 35 page index and well organized chapter headings to help the reader search out topics of interest. At the end of each chapter, the authors have compiled principle sources and further reading.

Overall, this is quite a comprehensive survey (at 942 pages of text), of a topic of profound importance. Highly recommended.

I find this book to be a very good resource. In addition it is very vell organized and easy to read. A very good book for students and people with a general interest in the subject.

(One error I did find was that Albert Speer's name was left off the list of defendants at the first Nuremberg trial on pages 927 and 928)

This is a companion that tells a lot about the war that has to do with the non-military aspects of the war -- homefront, media, politics, aftermath -- than the military aspects. Leaders, weapons and operations comprise less than one-third of the book. There are no index citations for the Battle of the Atlantic [although it is briefly mentioned in the portion of the book covering submarines], Matthew Ridgway, or James Gavin. The operations that are covered have a useful format of Primary Objective, Forces, Commanders, Military Losses, and Result, as well as a short synopsis of the operation.

The Companion is more useful as a secondary reference work than as a primary. There is similar information in greater detail in Wikipedia entries.

Hello,
The books, Crusade in Europe by Eisenhower, and My Three Years with Eisenhower by Butcher, plus this book are some of the best books about WWII. The only thing really wrong with this book is that Eisenhower's name and picture are left out of the sections on military leaders of the USA and Allies. I didn't think an error of this type was possible. Like leaving Montgomery or Churchill out of the UK section. Regards, Bill