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Concise and with a gripping narrative, it is perfect for anyone wishing to have a complete account of the war. I sincerely believe that it will be considered a reference book on the subject. Totally recommended!
Single-volume chronologies of WW2 seem to be all the rage of late, and this book must compete with such works as Max Hastings' "Inferno" and Gerhard Weinberg's "World at Arms." Unlike the two mentioned, which take a particular unique vertical slice, Beevor just tries to tell a decade-long story about two theaters of war, and do it competently. In that he succeeds, for the most part.While the writing is not the breathtaking sort often reached for by the likes of Weinberg, it is readable and enjoy...
Every nation experienced and remembers the war in different ways. For the British, French and Poles, it began with the Nazi attack on Poland in September 1939. For Russians, notwithstanding their assaults on Poland, Finland and the Baltic States, the real war started in June 1941 with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. For Americans, it began with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For Japan, however, Pearl Harbor was the continuation of an expansionist military adventure th...
For some crazy reason I bought both Beevor's book on World War II and Max Hasting's Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 when they were published in the US a couple years ago. While I wouldn't call myself a WW2 buff, my steady interest dates back to the summer of 1976 when I picked up John Lukacs' The Last European War, September 1939/December 1941 in a Georgetown bookstore. Lukacs provides a rich diplomatic history, and the kind of drama underlying the many novels of Alan Furst. Beevor and Hast...
I approached Antony Beevor's World War II with considerable trepidation. Beevor is brilliant at dealing with individual battles or campaigns but had never before attempted synthesis history. His survey of World War II is a resounding success as Beevor demonstrates his strength in this area.Contrary to tradition which selects the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 as the starting point of WWI, Beevor uses Stalin's decision the previous June to mount a large scale response to Japan's incu...
Tremendous. Haven't been able to leave this alone over the last fortnight. Finished it last night.Left me asking the question: how did civilisation survive such a conflict?
"This was the murder of everyday traditions that grandfathers passed to their grandchildren, this was the murder of memories, of a mournful song, folk poetry, of life, happy and bitter, this was the destruction of hearths and cemeteries, this was the death of a nation which had been living side by side with Ukrainians over hundreds of years."- Vasily Grossman on the Holocaust in the UkraineWarning: This review contains facts of the Second World War that some readers may find disturbing. Reader d...
List of IllustrationsList of Maps--The Second World WarAcknowledgementsIndex(The full and extremely extensive notes and bibliography for this book are available in the hardback edition and also on the author's website at: www.antonybeevor.com. The sources have been omitted from the paperback to make it a more manageable and readable size.)
Hard to give this anything other than 5 stars. Being an absolute novice on the subject, I found this book fascinating, horrifying, edifying, and generally mind-blowing. For anyone worried it will be too dry, it is roughly 25% politics and military strategy, and 75% excerpts from countless first-hand accounts by soldiers, civilians, leaders, and poets. For example:"I saw a woman who's dress and hair had just caught fire, she was trying to run from the inferno but the tarmac had melted and her fee...
In the acknowledgements to his latest history, The Second World War, Antony Beevor says that he wrote this comprehensive tome on one of the biggest events in human history because he wanted to fill in the gaps to his own knowledge of the topic. But, he says, “above all it is an attempt to understand how the whole complex jigsaw fits together, with the direct and indirect effects of actions and decisions taking place in very different theatres of war.” In this, Beevor succeeds where no other hist...
Another fantastic overview of WW2. Broad, brush strokes that gets across detail into all fronts of the war, but it also includes small stories about the 'little people' which added to the immersion.
Incredible. This masterpiece is the definitive history of World War Two. Beevor writes incredibly detailed accounts of all the battles and political maneuvering in lucid prose that never bogs down. He also includes many details that were suppressed by the victors, especially regarding the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese military, which are generally not as familiar to most of us as the Nazis' atrocities, but were often even more shocking, if not quite as numerous in scope. The evil madnes...
I will open by writing that I know very little about the Second World War. Well, I KNEW very little about the Second World War. After reading this book I now know a lot more. I'm not sure I'm happier for the knowing. I did not sit down and read this book through in one sitting. To be honest I've had it for several months and I read it chapter by chapter in between all of the other books I have read this summer. It was too much war for me to take all at once. That does not mean that it was a bad
I have had the urge to read a good general history of the Second World War for years and finally decided to go for this one as Antony Beevor is highly regarded. This is a good narrative history that provides an accessible general picture of the central historical moment of the last century. There wasn't much that really struck me as a revelation or an original and revisionist perspective having picked up a lot this history through other reading or documentaries and films, but I suppose you have...
My favourite World War 2 book, I like how it covers the war in Aisa furing the 1930's before the outbreak of war in Europe. Really educational
This is a subject where a single battle, a single country or a single person can take up more than one tomes of material. So, I imagine it's extremely hard to fit the whole war in a single book.Yet Beevor has done it with surprising clarity, completeness and depth. I've read hundreds of books on WWII, and yet I found that there were actually new things to learn from this single-tome volume!Beevor writes very nicely, with a fluid narrative that keeps the interest up with no let up. He manages to
Mostly army movement by army movement, blow by blow.The author might object to being upbraided for putting too many trees in my forest, but I would have liked to have seen more scenes, tension-related examples of the trends he was describing. Failing that, or in addition to it, I would have liked to have gotten a peek into the minds of some of the war's figures.What the author did do was to describe the mindset of the German people as they gradually edged toward the previously unthinkable and th...
It took me about 9 months to read this book by Antony Beevor. During this time period, I was consumed by the events that took place during 1939-1945 while the world and civilization plunged into uncertainty and fear. Everything that I had learned about the War previously seemed naive in comparison to what actually happened. I will not wax-poetic on exactly why that is, but I will say that I am very thankful I read this. I am left with an immense sense of appreciation at the heroism of the indivi...
A casual, armchair study of the second world war encompasses many books over many years, indeed, many decades -- it's a slow, layered, mental-edifice-building process -- and no two readers go about it in the same way. Everyone starts and proceeds from different points, and from different cultural backgrounds, with particular biases typically stemming from where one hails. Beevor mentions this latter point near the end of his expansive overview of The Second World War, and it's an important and p...