The Second World War

· Hachette UK
4.7
105 reviews
Ebook
736
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.
*****

The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert.

Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor's The Second World War never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in the most terrible war in history.

Ratings and reviews

4.7
105 reviews
A Google user
October 19, 2012
Well written and very accessible. Beevor masterly weaves stories of individual bravery, tragedy and cruelty whilst detailing the conflict through a wide angle lens.Doing so adds a human dimension to what could easily have been just another dry book about WW2 and its battles. This and Beevor's excellent use of primary sources (which he put to such good use in his superb, earlier book Starlingrad) means that a person without any great knowledge of the war will enjoy reading the book Beevor is not one to promote WW2 as a victory of the great and the good. He, on numerous occasions makes the point that for the Allies victory was at best a tainted one.
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Crithica
March 25, 2016
Beevor has given an exquisite experience for readers of the deadliest conflict in history... You'd hear tales from all fronts and not just the victors...
6 people found this review helpful
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angus morris
July 20, 2019
Covers a huge ammount of content in differant theatres of war. A fantastic book regarding the effects of the war globally and the military history during the war. 10/10
3 people found this review helpful
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About the author

ANTONY BEEVOR is the author of 13 works of nonfiction, including Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (1991), which was awarded a Runciman Prize; Stalingrad (1998), which won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature; and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (2009), which received the Prix Henry Malherbe in France and the Westminster Medal from the Royal United Services Institute, and was a No 1 Bestseller in seven countries. His most recent work is the 2023 Sunday Times bestseller Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921. Educated at Sandhurst, Beevor served as regular officer with the 11th Hussars, leaving the Army after five years to write.

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