A review by natep
Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World by Diana Preston

3.0

Eight Days at Yalta describes the entirety of the Yalta Conference. It covers the background information needed to understand the negotiations, the day-by-day details of the actual conference, and the aftermath that resulted in the creation of the UN and the loss of Poland to the Soviet sphere. The main part of the book covers the vagaries of negotiations at Yalta, where the three leaders met with their retinues and created the world as we know it. It was astonishing to see how central Poland was at this conference because I had never learned in school about its post-war experience, mainly its role as catalyst for the UK's joining the war. It was also scary to see the way Churchill and Roosevelt were charmed by Stalin, having grown up hearing about the terrors perpetrated by his regime. I still cannot understand why an atomic bomb was so difficult to comprehend, but I guess that's more of a societal change showing within me. Sourcing was very good for this book, relying on minutes taken by all three countries and discussing where they differed. This was definitely a good book to learn about the conference from, and I recommend it to anyone interested.

An e-copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.