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Rating: 
Summary: Essays by Today's Foremost World War II Authors
Review: This book offers a fine collection of essays written by today's foremost authorities on the second world war. Authors such as Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, and Dan Kurzman have contributed to this fine book. The layout of the book is excellent. Instead of having individual chapters, the editors have put the essays into chronological order, so the reader doesn't necessarily have to read the book in sequential order. Rather, the reader has the freedom to skip to the parts of the book that they find the most interesting if they so choose.Each essay gives a unique insight into a specific area of the war. Some of my favorites included "Diary of a Tail Gunner", told by a B-17 tail gunner who survived twenty six missons over Nazi territory. I also enjoyed "The Other Pearl Harbor", which discussed MacArthur's failures in the Phillipines after the Pearl Harbor attack. There is something for everyone in this book, regardless if you enjoy reading about the European or Pacific theaters. This is a good book and gives a fine overview of the entire war as well as some lesser-known encounters.
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Summary: Illuminating Collection Of Essays On World War Two!
Review: What a wonderful gift editor Robert Crowley has given us with this treasure trove of individual essays from individual contributors in this spellbinding book covering a number of different aspects and experiences during World War Two! As one of the authors, the late popular historian Stephan Ambrose has shown us with many of his own works, the history of the Second World War was such a massive and variegated plethora of anecdotes, campaigns and experiences that it is nearly impossible to exhaust the steady stream of captivating stories that spring from its loins like bouncing babies, fully formed, into the waiting reader's lap. This is a particularly attractive package of essays, perfect for people who want something relatively short, as each individual offering within is, something one can read on a plane flight in its entirety and then pick up later without trying to remember the context or story thread where he had left off. And each of the stories makes for fascinating reading indeed. The list of authors included is both impressive and eclectic, ranging from Ambrose, who weighs in with the taut and stirring tale of a platoon of paratroopers attempting to take and control a bridge key to the initial thrust of the first few hours of the Normandy landing, to Caleb Carr, better known for his success as a novelist ("The Alienist") but quite an eminent historian as well, to William Manchester to John Keegan to Antony Beever to Stanley Weintraub to David M. Glantz. And this is only some of the luminary historically prominent authors gathered together in what can only be described as a bravura collection of stories and perspectives on the total war effort, ranging in topics from the island hopping effort in the South Pacific to the desperate hours of the first few hours leading up to the Battle of the Bulge in the French Ardennes in December of 1944. Despite my own wide reading of similar historical sources over the last thirty years, I found several of the articles quite illuminating and educational, as with Caleb Car's treatment of life on the ground as the invasion of Poland proceeds in September, 1939 in the precipitating event that quickly served to trigger the advent of the Second World War as such. Similarly, articles by Charles Berges, Sir David Fraser, and Carlo D'Este proved both fascinating and edifying in illuminating aspects of the war only poorly understood and studied in the existing literature. This monograph especailly serves the interested private scholars like me who wants to know more about various different aspects and perspectives of the war that are not adequately or fully treated elsewhere, and used in conjunction with marvelous other resources such as Gerhard Weinberg's masterful "A World At Arms", Richard Spector's terrific ""Eagle Against The Sun", and William Shirer's eye-witness testimony in "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich", gives us a much richer and more comprehensive understanding of the signal historical event of the 20th century. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: World War II Vignettes
Review: With any compilation from various authors, the articles in that type of book tend to be a bit uneven. Some articles are excellent, others less so. That is the situation with this work, I feel. There are the majority of articles which rate five stars, and there are some which go as low as three. I have therefore averaged out my ratings as a whole, and come up with this four star rating opinion. That having been said, let me recommend this work to you if you are at all interested in learning little bits and pieces about important parts of WW II. It is also quite possible that you will enjoy some of the articles that I did not, for everyone's take on writing is subjective. You may not learn a lot of new information in this book, but at its best the info is presented in extremely interesting ways, and even in some of the lower- rated articles, there are still nuggets of information which I appreciated receiving. You won't be disappointed by reading this work.
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