The War, 1939-1945 (Paperback)

I would strongly recommend this as a book for the general history reader. It might occasionally lose a reader who isn't familiar with the skeleton of the war's events, as the personal diaries from which excerpts are taken sometimes fall between the cracks of the great events that might appear on a timeline. That isn't a weakness; it's a strength. Those passages often bring the reader most fully into the confusion and the real human experience of the war.

The great events are well represented, at any rate, in a highly personal and emotional way. Where the usual general history concentrates on the innovations of blitzkreig, this book gives us the diary of Rommel - and another journal by a 12-year-old belgian boy, waiting in an air raid shelter for his mother to come back and trying to comfort his steadily more anxious younger brother.

No book could tell this whole story, and of course this one isn't perfect. There are times when the narrative pauses to 'fill in' some big event in an editor's voice, and when that happens I'm jarred by the shift in tones. As a starting point, though, and just as a read, this is without question the first book I would recommend on World War II. The strength of the bibliography makes it a fantastic resource for other choices later, too.

Very, very highly recommended.

This smattering of excerpts from first person accounts was the perfect antidote to the chilled feeling Keegan gave me with his "ghost units" and "divisions of less than the first quality." I kept thinking of the human stories behind those repeated stock phrases. This book is a collection of those stories.

I would very highly recommend this as a book for the general history reader. It might occasionally lose a reader who isn't familiar with the skeleton of the war's events, as the personal diaries from which excerpts are taken sometimes fall between the cracks of the great events that would appear on a war timeline. That isn't a weakness; it's a strength. Those passages are sometimes the ones that bring the reader most fully into the confusion and the real human experience of the war.

The great events are well represented, at any rate, and in a highly personal and emotional way. Where the usual general history concentrates on the innovations of blitzkreig, this book gives us the matter-of-fact diary of Rommel - and another journal by a 12-year-old belgian boy, waiting in an air raid shelter for his mother to come back and trying to comfort his steadily more anxious younger brother. There are times when the narrative pauses to 'fill in' some big event in an editor's voice, and when that happens I'm jarred by the shift in tones.

No book could tell this whole story, and of course this one isn't perfect. As a starting point, though, and just as a read, this is without question the first book I would recommend on World War II.

The strength of the bibliography makes this a fantastic resource for other choices later, too. Very, very highly recommended.