Customer Reviews

Winds of War

5 star:		(96)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've read many WWII-related novels and works of non-fiction over the years. Therefore, I'm somewhat surprised it took me this long to arrive at Herman Wouk. Winds of War is a sweeping, magnificent epic that captured me in a way few novels do.

Herman Wouk tells the story of a fictional USN family as the events leading up to America's entry into war cast them hither and yon. London, Berlin, Moscow, Pearl Harbor, New York City, Rome, Manila, and Washington DC all figure prominently as do the leaders of each Axis and Allied country.

Having read much about WWII, I especially enjoyed Wouk's flawless chronology and the detail with which it was adorned. Indeed, one could absorb a better understanding of the WWII event timeline from Winds of War than from many non-fictional accounts.

I do most of my reading at night before sleep. Winds of War had me looking forward to bedtime on my commute home from work. I loved this book. I loved it's character formation, it's pace, it's geographical range, and it's towering level of suspense. Every ingredient required for a memorable epic is present in an impeccable weave.

Winds of War rates 5 stars and more.

I'm a bit too young for World War II, but my dad--enlisting in the Navy at age 17--survived Pearl Harbor, a later kamikaze attack on his ship (the USS San Francisco) at the battle of Guadalcanal, and personal participation in the invasion of Guam (3rd wave, to set up a communications station). As a Navy brat, I played on abandoned pillboxes in the jungle outside of Subic Bay (Philippines) in the late 50s and picked up empty shell casings on a group family outing to Corregador.

That said, I consider _The Winds of War_ and _War and Remembrance_ to be the greatest novels written about World War II. The historical detail is dead on, the military, political, and social commentary is brilliant, and the story itself keeps you page-turning for a few thousand pages. It is a heart-wrenching book that helps one grasp--six decades later--what it was like to have the entire world plunged into war, with a close look at the horrors of the Holocaust.

Wouk actually served in the US Navy in the Pacific during WW II. He lived through the war and brings that whole era to life in a way that I doubt any current author could. And yet they are utterly relevant today. I frankly think they should be required reading in college or even high school. Read them. ..bruce..

There are 4 components a writer needs to write: Style, Theme, Character Development, and Storytelling Ability. All writers have these traits in varying degrees, but no writer has ever been called truly GREAT without having an abundance of Storytelling Ability. This is paramount; if you can't hook the reader it doesn't matter how jazzy you write or how noble is your theme. You must be able to tell a good story. Our greatest, and most popular writers, have always understood this: Hemingway, Miller, Wolfe (both), Bellow, Stephen King. Great storytellers. Seated in the front row of this class is Herman Wouk, an enormously popular writer who, despite his Pulitzer Prize for "The Caine Mutiny", has never been considered great, in the sense that these others have.

That's a true shame. Wouk can tell a story---and I mean a WHOPPER, an EPIC in the true sense of the word---like nobody else from his generation. "The Winds of War" is part one of his absolute masterpiece, a tsunami tale of adventure, tragedy, romance, death, birth...you name it, it's in there. The story of the Henry family, headed by Victor "Pug" Henry, a Captain in the U.S. Navy, as it spreads across the globe during World War Two.

This is a virtuoso performance. Wouk knits the personal stories of the Henry clan together with factual history, using letters, quotes from speeches & books, anything he can think of to put you THERE, smack dab in the middle of the action. And you are there: you follow Pug to meetings with Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and on and on. Putting fictional characters in the room with real people is a huge risk, it almost never works, but Wouk pulls it off with charm to spare. You're in Warsaw when the Nazis invade, you're at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attack, you're in Rome when Mussolini declares war. Wouk sucks you into the narrative so completely you forget that Pug's travels are pretty damn impossible. Who cares? He's a HERO, it's his job to be in impossible situations, and Pug does his job like a champion. All of his characters are absolutely fleshed out, the dialogue is nearly ear-perfect, the historical events build momentum like no book you'll ever read...forget all the pretenders to the throne, from Mailer to Jones and all the little men in between. THIS IS THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. This is good old-fashioned storytelling genius, the kind of book nobody writes anymore because Style has taken center stage in the last 50 years, sadly. (I blame Joyce) If more people would read this book, and its sequel "War And Remembrance", maybe we could get back to what writing---in fact language itself---was created for in the first place: TO TELL A STORY.

Check out Herman Wouk, one of the greats.

I was thrilled to find The Winds of War on Kindle just days after I'd been thinking I'd love to reread it -- there's nothing better than reading a really long book on a Kindle, for weight reasons alone.

But the formatting seems to have been done either in haste or with no oversight whatsoever -- it's full of typos, missing letters and even the occasional missing phrase or sentence.

Herman Wouk deserves better.

Let me start with saying that the book itself deserves 5 stars, easily. It's awesome, amazing, wonderful. Thank God I read it in print format first.

Now, on to the Kindle edition ...

I do think that if you decide to offer a book in a Kindle edition, someone really has to -- I don't know -- READ IT! Not just scan in the original and trust that your software is up to the task of rendering the original perfectly in the new medium. YOU HAVE TO CHECK YOUR WORK.

Why am I sure this didn't happen? The section heading in big bold print reading "Bearl Barbour" sort of gives it away.

Seriously, the Kindle edition is riddled with errors like this, and no, I'm not particularly looking for them. Someone needs to go back and fix this. Seriously. It's just jarringly bad. I love my Kindle, and I've never encountered anything like this shoddy editing job in any of my other Kindle books, not even the free ones. This one I paid for, and I'm very, very offended that it was transcribed into the new format without someone proofreading it to make sure that everything came out all right. It's discourteous to a great book, a great author, and to readers.

This book has a perspective unlike any other World War Two novels that I have read. Many books present the "American hero" perspective, not allowing for the point of view of the other nations in the war. Set preceding the war and up to and until the American involvement, it presents the story of and American Naval aid and his family in Germany, Russia, America, and other historically significant places. They meet Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and many other significant figures. One of the different perspectives in this story is a fictional German account of the war and the reactions to the war of the peoples in the different places they visit. This book has been thoroughly researched and most of the information about the war are accurate. If you enjoy this book, as I did, it is continued in War and Rememberence, by the same author.

"The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" are two of my favorite books and other critics have given them good reviews for the hardback and paperback editions. I do have to express my disgust with the quality of the Kindle editions. In "The Winds of War" there were several typos, one of which was in over sized type that fairly screamed from the page. In "War and Remembrance" there are so many popping up that it is extremely distracting. One typo can be humorous, two can be a nuisance, but when they crop up nearly every other page, it becomes quite annoying and distracting. I believe the publishers should make the proper corrections and make corrected ones available for a second download. So far this has been my only encounter with typos in Kindle editions.

Every Herman Wouk book I have read has been incredible, but this one takes first prize.

The Winds of War is a work of historical fiction about the lead up to the outbreak of World War II in Europe (it had, of course already begun in Asia between Japan and China and other Asian neighbors) and the effect of the war on an American military family. It ends when America enters the war. The sequel, War and Remembrance continues the story through the end of the war.

The main character, Victor Henry, a Commander in the United States Navy is sent to Germany just before the beginning of the war as a naval attache in the American embassy. He is the gruff career military man with compassion and love just below the surface and easily recognized by anyone except his family. His wife Rhoda is a Washington, DC socialite who was captivated by Victor but is now restless in her life as an officer's wife.

Victor and Rhoda have three children, Warren, the eldest who follows his father into the Navy and puts in for flight training, a daughter who is a less developed character and the aptly named Byron, a dreamer and a sensitive man who bridles under his father's influence and flees college to Siena, Italy, where he becomes an assistant to the American Jewish writer, Aaron Jastrow and falls in love with his daughter Natalie.

Victor Henry has something of Zelig in him and is a bit player in many important events of the time. He attends a weekend retreat of high-ranking Nazis and has meetings with FDR.

Byron's employer Aaron Jastrow is a complex man, both running from his roots as a Yeshiva boy in Poland, and the product of those roots. Natalie is a perfect picture of an American ex-pat woman living in Europe (first Paris than Italy) in the heyday of Americans living abroad. And all of us can empathize with Byron, the young man who has not yet found his way in the world.

All these characters are set against the backdrop of the precursor to war and the beginning of the war. For instance, one of the best sections of the book is an extremely harrowing but vivid section in which Byron, Natalie and Natalie's lover get stuck in Poland as the Nazis begin their occupation of that country.

The fact that Wouk can seamlessly weave this web of characters into the tumultuous time in the late 1930s and early 1940s is a testament to a great author. Indeed, I am writing this review at least 10 years after finishing the book, yet it is all vivid in my mind.

One final note that deserves mention: Wouk treats us to several sections of a fictional book within a book. After the war, Victor Henry translates a book by a German World War II general. Wouk intersperses excerpts of this fictional book throughout the story, providing a seemingly totally realistic view from a German nationalist who fought for the Nazis (although was not a Nazi himself).

A must read for anyone who would describe himself or herself as any of the following: (a) a history or historical fiction fan, (b) a fan of epic romance, (c) anyone interested in World War II, (d) anyone interested in the Navy.

My paperbacks of this book, its sequel "War and Remembrance" and "The Caine Mutiny" are all dissolving--and sixty bucks for a box set of the first two is freakin' sticker shock. Herman Wouk is singlehandedly responsible for giving me a decent perspective of World War II, as an antidote to my father's chauvinistic "The Great Santini--The Previous Generation" approach. Through Wouk, we meet Navy officer Pug Henry, a "heluva fighting man" who seems a bit one-dimensional, but he's more than just a GI; he's a human being. His wife is intelligent but cynical and superficial. As for his kids, maybe the oldest son has chosen to emulate Dear Old Dad, but there's a kid brother who's an immature Joe College-type and a baby sister who's in the perilous territory of late adolescence. In the Wouk tradition (which, come to think of it, is also the American tradition), people whose flaws are seemingly insurmountable become heroes in their own way. In a way, Herman Wouk epitomizes American literature more than the more obvious choices like Twain and Hemmingway.

The pair (Winds of War plus War and Remembrance) are must-read books for anyone who wants to understand World War II. Following a military family through the pre-war years up until Pearl Harbor, Winds of War sets the stage and covers the early war in Europe in detail. War and Remembrance then picks up after Pearl Harbor and gets all the way to the victory over the Japanese.

Artfully using characters that have a plausible reason to be in important locales for the war, Wouk combines the family's story with military analysis (by a fictitious German general) to give a complete story. It's amazing that he can work so much that's relevant to the war into a drama about fictional characters.

The novel gives you a sense of the military and geographic factors that drove the war, the logistic and economic factors, and the psychology of the leaders of the great powers. But you're also treated to an understanding of the spirit of the times. Younger readers especially will begin to understand what it was like to live in an age very unlike the modern world, and one in which mortal threats were commonplace.

I recently reread Winds of War after a twenty year gap, and enjoyed it even more this time. I feel that I know the characters even better the second time through, and better understand their predicaments and the choices they made.

I only have only one quibble about characterization. One of the characters, a Jewish wife to one of the military family, is the on-scene witness in Europe to Germany's treatment of the Jews. While I think that material is very important, the series of circumstances that keeps her and her uncle in Europe seems a bit contrived to me. But I'll give Wouk a little license. The book would have not been complete or nearly as powerful if it had left out a complete understanding of the Holocaust, and if it took a little contrivance to get two Americans to witness those events, I consider that a worthwhile trade.

If you've seen the TV series and liked it, you really ought to get the complete picture by reading this book. I've given it as a gift to friends for years. I used to pick up copies I would see in used book stores so that I could give it to folks I thought might be interested.

Unfortunately I ended up with no copies except one very old falling-apart one, and bought a recent printing of the paperback. The quality was not as good it should be, probably because this book is over a thousand pages and they cut some corners on production. I have to wash my hands after each reading because the print smudges off the book. So if you can afford it, you might want to get the school/library binding version instead. It's more than twice as expensive, but I expect it's of far superior quality. I'm probably going to pick up one of those myself. This pair of books is one that ought to be displayed proudly in any thinking person's library.