Rating: 
Summary: Simply the best Churchill biography.
Review: This, the second volume of Manchester's Churchill biography, continues the extraordinary story of the British prime minister up to 1940. And as with the first volume, it is incredible reading, perhaps the best biography written about anyone. Manchester's gift as a writer is absolutely astounding. One feels there is nothing he does not know about his subject or the subject's time. Particularly interesting are the quotes he includes, which when I first read them I had to resist framing for my library wall. And almost as interesting as Churchill are the myriad individuals who surrounded him, exhumed here by Manchester for a final and proper setting of the record. Ultimately, we come to Churchill's greatest contemporaries, Chamberlain, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Hitler, and are drawn with such expertise into the relationships that we are left wondering how it will all turn out. But of course we do know, and it is with growing dismay and sadness that we let Manchester take us to the end of the book, with the detailed recounting of the terrible stumbling of the West's leaders toward WWII and the end of an era. Of course, this is the beginning of Churchll's greatest challenge, to be continued in the as yet unpublished third volume, but we still feel regret for having lost to time such an able and important man. With the last page, our respect for him has us near tears with the knowledge that the world, more than ever, needs more Churchills and will not have them.
Rating:
Summary: Third volume does exist
Review: To those of you who are wondering when Mr Manchester will release the third volume, it has in fact been written for a number of years. However due to the fact that the US and other governments are rather sensitive to the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and all of the secrets surrounding it, this third volume was never allowed to be released in America, England and I don't know where else. Very sad, as these were two of the best books I have ever read!
Rating:
Summary: sad news
Review: Today's New York Times (aug. 14, 2001) brings the sad news that William Manchester has announced that his health is unequal to the task of writing the long anticipated last volume of this great biography. This is a heavy disappointment to readers, Churchill fans and Manchester fams everywhere. But while we will always wish that we could have read the last volume, I want to say thank you, Mr. Manchester, for the wonderful books that you did give us.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly readable comprehensive history of Churchill .
Review: Very readable history. Changed my perspective on the period and the reasons why England slept while Hitler grabbed Eastern Europe. Manchester is very obviously a Churchillian which influences his objectivity (the reason for the "8" rating). Overall, a good comprehensive history of Churchill and the events leading up to WWII
Rating:
Summary: Best Biography Ever Written
Review: What a thing to have written this book in the already astonishing cannon of this master historian/biographer. Maybe it just took a devastatingly brilliant writer to untangle the enigma who could write the History of the English Speaking Peoples while simultaneously running the British Admiralty in the beginning of WWII. I don't know whose stamina to admire more, Churchill's or Manchester's.
Rating:
Summary: Best story teller of all
Review: What can I say, this is simply the best elucidation of Churchill and his times. The subject itself is very attarctive, but I am more impressed by how Manchester told the story.
Rating:
Summary: The best account of Churchill in the 1930s
Review: William Manchester is one of our finest writers, and "Alone" is the best book I have read about Churchill. Manchester's brilliant opening chapter about a Churchillian day at Chartwell, his country home, establishes quickly in the reader's mind the virtues and foibles of a man who described himself as "great" and never suffered from false modesty.
I have a couple of quibbles about the book. First, I thought Manchester's admiration for his subject was occasionally a bit cloying. Secondly, and more seriously, I don't think Manchester did a very good job detailing the ideological currents of the 1930s. Manchester portrays Britain's leaders during that era as clueless, weak, and something close to wicked. I would tend to regard them as people who thought that Communism was a greater threat than Fascism and reacted accordingly in the spirit of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." They were nearly right. But Churchill, unencumbered by an attraction to foreign ideologies, despised both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and early on correctly identified the Nazis as the immediate and most serious menace to his beloved Isle.
That Churchill was right and had the courage to stand isolated and steadfast in his convictions is the basis of his greatness. Manchester has written a masterpiece biography about the essential man of the 20th century.
Smallchief
Rating:
Summary: A chronicle of courage
Review: William Manchester's first Churchill volume covers the first fifty eight years of Winston's life. His second, "Alone," covers just eight. Assuming that there will be a third, it will cover the final quarter century, including most of World War II and Churchill's two spells as Prime Minister. To the elementary observer, these divisions seem somewhat out of sorts.It's only by reading that middle volume that we understand just how critical those eight years were. Above all, "Alone" is a morality play -- the best one I know -- about what happens when democracies fail to confront aggression. At no other time in the 20th Century were so many people so wrong about a matter as grave as the Nazi buildup in the 1930s. Only Winston Churchill and a few of his cohorts disagreed at the time. Early in the book, Manchester briefly lays out a powerful case for Britain's aversion to confronting Germany. Britain sensed the unfairness of the Versailles "diktat," and reacted strongly against it. To a great degree, London was fed up with France's insolence after the war, both in its lust for revenge against Germany, and in the flaccid disillusionment of Paris intellectuals. At the same time, Great Britain was a nation cornered by two bloodthirsty wolves -- Nazism and Bolshevism. In order to defeat the other, one would have to be appeased. Being a country dominated by aristocrats, Britain chose to enlist Hitler as a bulwark against Communism. In doing so, they ignored the basic fact of geopolitical proximity: only Germany, abutting France and a few hundred miles away from Britain's shores, had the capacity to strike at the West. Britain's aristocrats bet wrong, and Churchill, ever the "traitor to his class" immediately recognized it. Churchill's story also holds valuable lessons for us today. By nature, Churchill was naturally aggressive, and as such, Manchester writes that he saw exactly what Hitler was up to. Pacifists often distrust such assertiveness, even in a democracy. In fact, assertiveness in defense of democratic values is almost always the right foreign policy. One can have assertiveness for good, or assertiveness for evil, and one must choose it for good. In this way, Churchill's "black and white" Manichean worldview has truly stood the test of time.
Rating:
Summary: The years that really define Churchill
Review: Winston Churchill, it can be argued, did more than any other single person to save the free world from Hitler. This book does more than any other to demonstrate what set Churchill apart from others in this monumental task.
In covering Churchill's years of political exhile between WWI and WWII, Manchester captures the man who was willing to assess the world order for himself and stand completely alone with every force imaginable opposing him. In the end, he was right and the world was wrong. This book captures that wonderfully.
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