The Winds of War

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Summary: Brilliant and Informative!
Review: Having just completed a class on pre-WWII Europe I found this book to be amazingly accurate while drawing me in to the lives of Pug, Byron, and the rest of the family.

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Summary: Terrific book of historical fiction
Review: Herman Wouk will go down in history as one of the great storytellers of all time. His strength lies in his characterization and telling of acccurate history. With pre-WWII Europe as the background, Wouk recreates a timeless tale of an American Naval family caught up those turbulent and ever changing times. He covers all of the important events leading up to America's entry in the war and does it by having the reader visualize it though the eyes of regular Americans. If you are at all interested in historical fiction, are looking for an interesting addition to your collection of WWII books, or just want an excellent read, then buy this book. You will not be able to put it down and you will feel disappointed when it ends (which will lead you to the sequel "War and Remembrance")

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Summary: An exhilirating historical ride.
Review: The Winds of War is an exciting read that takes the reader into its story of basic human emotions and the psychic fallout of World War II. It is a constant roller-coaster of nuance that never lets up and is a relentless page-turner, to use a critics' cliche. What is so amazing about it is the way it refuses to worship its subject, but present the events of the beginning of the war with an objective eye. Subtle in story, elaborate in scope, it is quite a success. Despite its epic focus, it never loses sight of what really matters: the identities of the characters and their fine development through how they perceive the chaos around them.

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Summary: Great Book
Review: Greatest Book. The characters are really developed and you come away with a good knowledge of World War II

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Summary: Riveting tail of World War II and its affects on family.
Review: Herman Woulk invokes such vivid pictures of Pre-War Europe & America, that you can hear the horses pound down the streets of Siena. The hardest part of reading this book was putting it down.

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Summary: Haven't read War and Peace? Read this instead....
Review: It has always been one of my personal tenets that the really great novels evoke a sense of the time, place and history...To Kill A Mockingbird is a type exemplar of this, as is A Farewell To Arms. Perhaps here, as with Tolstoy's classic, this idea is a mite obviously taken. With this, together with War and Remembrance, I believe the author set out deliberately to recreate a modern version of what many long thought to be the world's greatest novel, one more comprehensible to a new generation of readers. An ambitious notion...and that Wouk succeeds as well as he has, I think, gives us a novel of grand dimensions while still very readable and enjoyable. Herman Wouk is not one of my favorite authors, yet these two works remain two of my favorites. Unforgettable is Pug Henry's epiphany while comparing his two sons, the easy son, Warren and the difficult Byron, as he finally comes to terms with them as people (in the second volume). If I thought teachers wouldn't despair at they very idea, I'd suggest that they might be required reading in high school. These comprise a major work of this half of the century.

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Summary: Captivating from page one!
Review: Better than the sequal, War and Remembrance. This is the captivating tale of the Henry clan as they face the start of World War II. Become involved in the lives of "Pug" and the family. I laughed and I cried. Truely worth reading. Wonderful characters, both real and ficticious.

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Summary: A well-researched, but somewhat overlong, book.
Review: Wouk doesn't quite reach the heights he reached with "The Caine Mutiny." However, those who are World War II buffs will enjoy the whirlwind that the Henry and Jastrow families are catapulted into. Victor "Pug" Henry is the consumate American hero: no-nonsence, highly educated, and enigmatic. Despite this fact, some readers might get bogged down in the political rhetoric which is no longer a sympton of this modern age; an example of this is the number of excerpts from the fictitious German general, Armin von Roon's, book. Wouk does well with conveying President Roosevelt's manner of speaking in relation to the fictional characters; however, it would seem that Wouk's treatment of his German characters is slightly unbalanced and not a little biased. I tend to think of Germany at this time as being full of misled minds, not evil for evil's sake. The true natures of those characters who did indeed exist were probably right on the money, however. All in all, the story is well developed, and the few flaws in the characterizations can be forgiven.

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Summary: A wonderful book if you can get past the first few pages.
Review: Years ago my father warned me (a 10 year old tyke at the time)that great books take a while to "get going" and that resolve is needed to plow through those first few pages...Well, its the first 200 pages in this case: Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War". As we are dryly introduced to Pug Henry, the stout naval commander, and his family of superstars and misfits, one can only wonder when SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN. But don't worry: It does...And after almost exactly page 200, the book becomes wonderfully delicious. All of a sudden the plot unravles into steam-rolling scenes set in Poland, Germany, and New York. In some parts, it even steals the "can't put it down mentality" from its cheaper fiction counterparts. Wouk seamlessly blends the magnanimous events of the war with the intricate stories of every character. The general but ubiquitous ideas that defined that time period (German Anti-Semitism or, say, American Isolationism) are presented as fresh and realisitc through Wouk's powerful writing. The fictional dialogues with some of history's most memorable men (Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt) are especially rewarding and, it seems, remarkably accurate in depiction of their characters. A definite must-read

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Summary: Near perfect tension filled fiction in a non-fiction setting
Review: This wonderful masterpiece of war time fiction has gone a long way in combining accurate military and political events as they touched the lives of the book's characters. The story revolves around the lives of the Henry and Jastrow families. Victor (Pug) Henry is a military attache. His son, a member of the US military is married to Natalie Jastrow who becomes trapped in Poland while trying to evacuate her uncle during the Blitzkreig. The author details the conflicts of each character but does so without letting the reader forget the more fatal global conflict each is involved in. This is accomplished by excerpts from a German general describing some of Hitler's more nightmarish plans for global domination, most notably Barbaroosa which marked the turning point for the Nazi's and the characters in the book. Each character is adept at whatever they do and yet their vulnerabilities are clearly defined. For Pug and his wife, the pressure of wartime service leads toward extra-marital affairs and yet both seem to innately sense that none of this would be occurring had it not been for the extraordinary circumstances of global conflict. For Natalie Jastrow and her uncle it's survival on a daily basis while trying to avoid the gas chamber. For her husband, Byron, it's carrying out his duty while feeling powerless to aid his wife who is half a world away. The book winds the reader through the resolution of not only the character's conflicts but the world's as well. In the end, you feel as though you have not only read a great story of human compassion and will but have also been given a short history lesson on those parts of World War II that aren't published much but were nonetheless crucial to Allied victory