The Second World War - Tapa dura

Praise for THE SECOND WORLD WAR

"[Beevor's] book is the definitive history. This is World War II as Tolstoy would have described it - the great and the small."--Washington Post

"Brilliantly written...Beevor's account [is] incomparably vivid...[a] magnificently readable book."--The New York Review of Books

"You feel yourself being carried along on the narrative flow, channeled this way and that through the pools and rapids by Beevor's expert helmsmanship. As we have come to expect from the author, great events are leavened by telling vignettes and anecdotes."--Patrick Bishop, Standpoint

"An outstanding example of narrative history at its best, at once scholarly, enlightening, entertaining and thought-provoking."--The Tablet

"Everything is pared down to serve the relentless thrust of his storytelling. The result is a magnificent performance - true excitement from one page to the next delivered in faultless prose. . . Beevor offers superbly vivid accounts, often with tiny details that will surprise even those who gorge themselves on shot and ball histories."--Christopher Silvester, Daily Express

"The chapters on the Nazi-Soviet war find Beevor at the top of his game, in command of a huge range of sources, with a fine eye for place and detail, deftly manipulating incident and character, and making effective use of soldiers' diaries and letters to create a vast human tapestry of war. The prose is relaxed and contains a spring in every paragraph. He excels too at grand strategy - as a diplomatic historian, he is a match for AJP Taylor. The conferences at Casablanca, Tehran, Yalta and so on, which can have their longeurs, here sparkle with wit and insight, especially into the behaviour of Stalin. There are revelations too."--Ben Shephard, Observer

"This book is a perfect mixture of world history and human experience, unbiased and highly readable."--The Journal

"Brocaded with details of the great campaigns and thoughtful explanations of Hitler's murderous belligerency, The Second World War is an absorbing, unsparingly lucid work of military history...exceptionally powerful."--Ian Thomson, The Spectator

"Antony Beevor's remarkably informative and well-written book . . . Beevor's enormous strength is that he can sketch out complicated campaigns clearly. . . Antony Beevor has done splendid justice to this [the bombing of Germany] and to a very great deal else."--Norman Stone, Literary Review

"This is history writ large. . . unexpected vignettes linger in the memory."--Daily Telegraph

The British historian and author presents a single volume history of the world's largest conflict, from Manchuria in 1939 to the Soviet invasion of northern China six years later, describing the human drama of soldiers, civilians and political leaders.