Description

‘The best single-volume history of the war ever written’ DOMINIC SANDBOOK, SUNDAY TIMES

‘A masterly account of that epic conflict’ ROBERT HARRIS

The anniversary edition of multi-million copy bestselling author Max Hastings’s seminal one-volume history of World War Two, published for the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.

This is a study of the greatest and most terrible event in history, which shows its impact upon hundreds of millions of people around the world – soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews. This is the ‘everyman’s story’. It is an attempt to answer the question: ‘What was the Second World War like?’

‘This global history of the Second World War is the best there is’ NIGEL JONES, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘No other general history of the war amalgamates so successfully the gut-wrenching personal details and the essential strategic arguments. Hastings has triumphed’ HEW STRACHAN, THE TIMES

‘No one could be better qualified than Max Hastings to write a single-volume history that covers every aspect of the Second World War… You will love this splendid book’ ANDREW ROBERTS, FINANCIAL TIMES

Publisher Review

"This is the book he was born to write: a work of staggering scope and erudition, narrated with supreme fluency and insight, it is unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written..... he writes with a wonderfully clear, unsentimental eye......and has a terrific grasp of the grand sweep and military strategy......But what makes his book a compelling read are the human stories......at the end of this gruesome, chilling but quite magnificent book, you never doubt that the war was worth fighting". Sunday Times "No other general history of the war amalgamates so successfully the gut-wrenching personal details and the essential strategic arguments. Melding the worm's eye view and the big picture is a difficult trick to pull of - but Hastings has triumphed". The Times "majestic...it is impossible to emerge without a sense of the sheer scale of human tragedy.....To gather all these anecdotes together is a task in itself, but to assemble them in a way that makes sense is something entirely different....Hastings shapes all these stories, almost miraculously, into a single coherent narrative". Daily Telegraph "In this massive work, the crowning volume of the 10 impressive books he has written about the Second World War, Sir Max Hastings spares us nothing in portraying the sheer bloody savagery of the worst war that the world has yet seen....this magnificent book....is hypnotically readable from the first page to the last". Sunday Telegraph "A fast-moving, highly readable survey of the entire war...Hastings combines a mastery of the military events with invariably sound judgment and a sharp eye for unusual telling detail....this is military history at its most gripping. Of all Max Hastings's valuable books, this is possibly his best - a veritable tour de force". Evening Standard