World War II (1931-1945)
“The Second World War presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it.” — Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” (1957)
Of the endless ocean of books on the Second World War, we have dozens and dozens of new and carefully chosen titles. I define it as beginning with the Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria and ending with not only V-E and V-J Days but also the immediate crises of displaced people, the Soviet Union’s creation of the Iron Curtain, and the growing revelations of the extent of the Holocaust.
In significant ways the Second World War was the defining crucible of the 20th Century. The First World War was prelude, the legacy of the 19th Century’s imperialism, and the Cold War was the sequel. Of the making of books about it there is no end — but the persistence of good research and good writing, and good publication underscores the war’s centrality of the world we live in today and the world our descendents will live in for the foreseeable future.
The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943 ( War in the West )
The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943 ( War in the West )
Following The Rise of Germany, the acclaimed first volume in his War in the West trilogy, James Holland has crafted a masterful and gripping narrative of the events that ultimately determined the outcome of World War II. By June 1941, Germany's war machine looked unstoppable. The Nazi blitzkrieg had taken Poland, France, and the Netherlands with shocking speed. The Luftwaffe had bombed London, while German U-boats wrought havoc on Allied shipping on the Atlantic. And yet, as Holland shows in The Allies Strike Back, cracks were already appearing in Germany's apparent invincibility. When the Americans entered the war in the west, Hitler was bogged down with a savage war of attrition as he attempted to invade the Soviet Union. The Allies soon stormed to victory in North Africa and escalated the bombing of Germany, fatefully turning the tides of the war and threatening the morale of the Third Reich.
With a wealth of characters from across the western theater of World War II, Holland tells a captivating story while calling on new research that challenges our assumptions and reframes our understanding of this momentous conflict.