The Second World War: A Complete History

by Martin Gilbert Narrated by Bernard Mayes

Overview

Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, here offers a complete history of World War II.

It began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. By the time it came to an end on V-J Day-August 14, 1945-it had involved every major power and become global in its reach. In the final accounting, it would turn out to be, in both human terms and material resources, the costliest war in history, taking the lives of forty-six million people.

With unparalleled scholarship and breadth of vision, Gilbert weaves together all of the war's aspects--the political, the military, the diplomatic, and, not least, the civilian--charting an almost day-by-day account of the terrible progress of the war's juggernaut of death and destruction. Through it all, his aim is to show what happened, not from the point of view of any one of the warring nations but from a global perspective. The result is the first total history of this global war, a work that is both a treasure trove of information and a gripping dramatic narrative.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This volume has an ``astonishingly broad'' scope, revealing the impact of major campaigns on soldiers and civilians worldwide. ``Masterful,'' said PW . ``Though the military aspect is told with noteworthy clarity and narrative power, most impressive is Gilbert's presentation of WW II as primarily a matter of organized evil and mass madness.'' Photos. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Though few one-volume histories of World War II have been published in the last ten years, the 50th anniversary of the war's start has inspired new works: Gilbert's book and John Keegan's The Second World War (reviewed in this issue, p. 102) are two of them. Gilbert's is less a battle history than Keegan's. For Gilbert (biographer of Churchill and Holocaust historian, author of the massive The Holocaust, LJ 2/1/86) the movements of armies and the decisions of statesmen were ultimately the consequences of Nazi and Japanese racial policies. Thus the struggles and fates of Axis victims are essential to the complete history of war, which inflicted such unprecedented suffering on innocent parties. Gilbert uses this perspective to present the war from an original angle. Accounts of campaigns and conferences are directly juxtaposed to descriptions of atrocities and resistance. Gilbert draws his human interest not from battlefields and home fronts, as do most histories of the war, but from concentration camps and ghettoes. In so doing he reminds us that World War II was a ``good war,'' because it was fought against tyrannies that perpetuated obscenities as a matter of principle. Recommended for all collections.-- Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs

Booknews

A reprint of the publisher's original cloth edition (1989) which was the US edition of the Brit Second World War. Such a massive book is no bargain in its paper incarnation. Cloth edition (unseen), $29.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From the Publisher

"In his transmission of the horror of the war, Martin Gilbert has achieved something no other historian but he could. There is indeed a relentless force about chronology when it is used as a tool by an historian of the stature of Martin Gilbert."
-The Sunday Telegraph

"Gilbert's flowing narrative is spiced with anecdotal details culled from diaries, memoirs, and official documents. He is especially skillful at interweaving summaries of military strategy with vignettes of civilian suffering." -Newsweek

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169547269
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/02/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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