The Greatest War - Volume I: From Pearl Harbor to the Kasserine Pass

by Gerald Astor

Book Overview

One of the nation's most acclaimed military historians presents an authoritative and dramatic three-volume oral history of World War II.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446610461
• ISBN13: 9780446610469
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Enormous history of WW2 still is cursory

This is a mass market version of Gerald Astor's magnum opus, a doorstop of a book that was so big I looked at it and actually laughed. I don't normally back off from large books: in this case, I wondered how much he could fit into the pages he had, and how much he'd have to leave out. The answer is, first, a great deal, second, more that he probably wanted to.The book has been divided into three volumes. The first covers the war to the conquest of Tunisia. The first half of the book mostly deals with the war in the Pacific, with the only European sequence being a bit on the Eagle Squadrons. The action doesn't jump around much, just from chapter to chapter, and the author keeps you in the picture, generally at least, as to the course of the war, so that all of the action that you are presented with is in context. It's all reasonably well-done.He does miss stuff, leave things out. The battle of Guadalcanal gets only a bit of coverage, and some of the smaller naval battles around the island are completely ignored. Some of the oral histories used have been in his other books, so if you've read a lot of Astor, be prepared for a bit of familiarity, here and there. Most of the stuff, however, is new.Overall this is a good book. I didn't give it five stars mainly because I will admit to a bit of a prejudice against oral histories: they're only semi-useful in deciding why things happened the way they did. Astor's only so-so at working this into his books, so I deducted a star

Clear, Informative and Enjoyable

This is a clear, informative and enjoyable oral history. Numerous eyewitness accounts coupled with the facts surrounding events make for great and credible reading.