The Second World War
The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, and writing with clarity and compassion, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert, to the Burmese jungle, SS Einsatzgruppen in the borderlands, Gulag prisoners drafted into punishment battalions, and to the unspeakable cruelties of the Sino-Japanese War. Moral choice forms the basis of all human drama, and no other period in history has presented greater dilemmas both for leaders and ordinary people, nor offered such examples of individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable kindness.
4.0 out of 5 based on 10 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
History |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
880 |
| RRP |
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| Date of Publication |
June 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0297844976 |
| Publisher |
Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| |
The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, and writing with clarity and compassion, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert, to the Burmese jungle, SS Einsatzgruppen in the borderlands, Gulag prisoners drafted into punishment battalions, and to the unspeakable cruelties of the Sino-Japanese War. Moral choice forms the basis of all human drama, and no other period in history has presented greater dilemmas both for leaders and ordinary people, nor offered such examples of individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable kindness.
Reviews
The New Statesman
John Gray
“Utterly absorbing ... this is as comprehensive and objective an account of the course of the war as we are likely to get, and the most humanly moving to date ... For this reader, the most arresting passages in Beevor’s story are those that detail the fog of incomprehension through which the world viewed the Nazi threat.”
06/06/2012
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The Times
Michael Tillotson
“Readers who may instinctively recoil from another book about the worldwide turmoil of 1939-45 would be unwise to ignore this one. Far from glorifying war, it reveals the cost in lives, resources and consequent delay in the development of the Third World brought about by the clash of ideologies. Personal accounts explain the emotions behind heroism and cowardice alike while, crucially, the author tells us of the aspirations, misconceptions and failings of the political and military leaders.”
09/06/2012
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The Literary Review
Norman Stone
“Remarkably informative and well-written … Beevor’s enormous strength is that he can sketch out complicated campaigns clearly. I was especially grateful for his delineation of the American war in the Far East. Pearl Harbor and Midway are very well done in A J P Taylor’s short Penguin history, now fifty years old, but you rather lose the pace in the later campaigns. Beevor makes up for that”
01/06/2012
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The Spectator
Ian Thomson
“Brocaded with details of the great campaigns and thoughtful explanations of Hitler’s murderous belligerence, The Second World War is an absorbing, unsparingly lucid work of military history. In his assessment of the war’s multiple theatres and fronts, Beevor highlights the significant yet often neglected (by western historians) Sino-Japanese conflict of 1937-45.”
02/06/2012
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The Evening Standard
Hew Strachan
“Most striking of all is Beevor’s portrayal of the fallibility of generals and admirals ... This is the place to begin if you need to get your knowledge of the war in order. Beevor is not afraid to quote the familiar when it is important or to let his favourite voices have their say but he also provides plenty of fresh insights for those who kid themselves that they know the story already.”
07/06/2012
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The Financial Times
Tony Barber
“… a pleasure to read and an example of intelligent, lively historical writing at its best ... Beevor shows an original touch by drawing attention to little-known but revealing episodes such as a Luftwaffe raid on the Italian port of Bari in December 1943 ... The Second World War is not without its flaws. It is a narrative history from start to finish, mainly military in its focus. As such, it is too rigidly structured to permit proper treatment of important themes such as the war economies of the participants.”
02/06/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Roger Moorhouse
“This is a splendid book, erudite, with an admirable clarity of thought and expression. For a summary of the Second World War — who did what to whom, when and why — the general reader would need look no further. Given such praise, it is perhaps churlish to offer a note of criticism. Yet it is hard to escape the impression that, in tackling such a vast subject, Beevor has been obliged to sacrifice too much of the very aspect that had become his stylistic trademark: the telling anecdote, the poignant aside, the illuminating vignette. The result is that the book — for all its excellence — appears to lack some of the pizzazz of his earlier offerings.”
03/06/2012
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The Economist
The Economist
“... where he is good, he is very good. Mr Beevor is full of insight about the connections between things—he sets out “to understand how the whole complex jigsaw fits together” ... This is, however, a less satisfying book than Mr Beevor’s earlier, more focused works. There is an unevenness of quality. The author has a tremendous grasp of the things he has written about before, in particular the titanic struggle between Hitler and Stalin. But he is dutiful rather than exhilarating when dealing with some other passages and theatres of the war.”
09/06/2012
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The Observer
Ben Shephard
“The Second World War is handsomely produced and generously priced but its oddities and imbalances suggest that Beevor has not had the editorial support that even a writer of his talents needs on so vast a project. One hopes this is not the shape of things to come in publishing.”
17/06/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
James Owen
“This is history writ large, and fashionably long. What seems perverse, however, is that in giving us the full panorama of events, he largely omits the close-ups which made his earlier books so readable … his decision to chronicle more than to interpret means that the writing tends to the descriptive rather than to the illuminating.”
11/06/2012
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