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ncrabb 's review for:
The Second World War: A Complete History
by Martin Gilbert
I wasn't certain when I took this book on earlier this month that I would have the stamina to finish it. I'm glad I did. Reading a book like this around Christmas time seems a little strange, but if not now, then when?
I enjoyed the book a great deal. The author is correct; this is indeed a complete history. Notice his choice of words here: He called it a complete history. If you go into this thinking this will be a detailed history, you will come away from the back cover feeling extreme disappointment. The author doesn’t go into detail, nor can he. A detailed history would take multiple volumes and be more work than most people would want to put into the reading. But it is very much complete.
The book begins, as you might expect it would, with Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939. From there, you follow other battles as they occur chronologically. There are fascinating snippets here in which you get information about the lives of some of the individuals in the book. The author seems to almost obsess with the number of Jews who died during the war. Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting he gloss over that. Quite the opposite. But he does seem to place a rather significant amount of attention on the deaths of Jews in various locations, not merely the concentration camps. That doesn't detract from the book for me. But it certainly brought those deaths front and center in a rather vivid way.
This is worth your time if you can find a copy. It has been out a lot of years but considering its format and the fact that it is only able to do an extremely shallow surface scratch of the war, I suspect the scholarship hasn't changed enough to render any of the material outdated.
I enjoyed the book a great deal. The author is correct; this is indeed a complete history. Notice his choice of words here: He called it a complete history. If you go into this thinking this will be a detailed history, you will come away from the back cover feeling extreme disappointment. The author doesn’t go into detail, nor can he. A detailed history would take multiple volumes and be more work than most people would want to put into the reading. But it is very much complete.
The book begins, as you might expect it would, with Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939. From there, you follow other battles as they occur chronologically. There are fascinating snippets here in which you get information about the lives of some of the individuals in the book. The author seems to almost obsess with the number of Jews who died during the war. Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting he gloss over that. Quite the opposite. But he does seem to place a rather significant amount of attention on the deaths of Jews in various locations, not merely the concentration camps. That doesn't detract from the book for me. But it certainly brought those deaths front and center in a rather vivid way.
This is worth your time if you can find a copy. It has been out a lot of years but considering its format and the fact that it is only able to do an extremely shallow surface scratch of the war, I suspect the scholarship hasn't changed enough to render any of the material outdated.