The Second World War in Color

by Adrian Wood, Stewart Binns, Adrian Binns, Stewart; Wood

Book Overview

The Second World War is the most documented, devastating and disastrous war in human history. This book presents new insight into the events that shaped the modern world, events from the invasion of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809299674
• ISBN13: 9780809299676
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.8" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

A war transformed

I agree with the premise that wars before Vietnam always seemed to appear in black and white photos and newsreels, giving us a distorted picture of what occurred. This book attempts, in a small way, to redress that impression, through the printing of a series of color photos of the war. These photos show war in a more terrible light, because the color certainly adds a glint of realism that is lacking in monochrome. The book also includes a brief text and timeline on the war, which is adequate for a work of this type. The letters, documents, etc, included in the book are almost as instructive as the photos, and often more so, since they give the people involved in the war new life, and tell us how they thought and felt during those turbulent times. I highly recommend this book, even if you only purchase it for the pictures!

The book of the great wwII

It shows some of the best pictures of ww2. For any historian like me it would be a great book to learn from. It tells about the uprising of the war. Also tells about the dictatorship of Germany and Japan. I liked the book because it shows key points in the war.I think another book that would be good to read is " Stand Where They Fought". This book has great illustrations.For any book history of wars I would suggest it to others.

I wish all high school students had to use this book

All too often, you hear someone say that "nobdoy teaches history anymore." This book would really help to do that. The reason this book is different is that it is packed with lots of color pictures that help make the secnes of World War II much more real, and not in the usual age-distorted color more commonly seen. The accompanying text includes very useful timelines, and then the real treat- letters and documents from both sides of the conlfict, Allied and Axis, personal and official. This would be a great book to use to have students see, think, and learn about this pivotal time from many different perspectives.

A Unique and Poignant View of the Second World War

I picked up this book last November.......Expecting to have this read in an hour or so, I kept returning to viewing both the photographs - many of which were never published before - and the excerpted text - and much of those passages were quite poignant and difficult reads.There was the description of the death of a young Welsh miner fighting in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The account was written was a fellow member of the British Battalion, and although presumably a Communist, the passage spoke of Wales, family and the Spanish earth in which the boy died.The family accounts telling of RAF fliers who never returned from their bombing missions over Germany, or the haunted German tank officer in a Berlin shelter at the onslaught of the Russian advance telling his fellow Germans to fight to the death because of the depravations done by the Wehrmacht and SS in France,Russia and elsewhere.Then there is the horrifying and heartrending account of a Jewish rickshaw driver in the Warsaw Ghetto being tortured to death by a sadistic SS officer for crossing his path.These passages provide a worthy though not always matching narrative to the photographs.Yes, there are complaints about the photographs. But remember, colour photography was about as new in the Second World War as black and white photography was in the American Civil War. It wasn't always possible to match a colour photograph with an event,especially in the case of the Holocaust, or when a battle was in full rage.And the photograph of an atomic bomb explosion over a Japanese city was in reality the explosion of an H-Bomb over a pacific island in the 1950s.The book is very much worth the purchase to experience to newness of colour photography combined with readable reference of what the common man or women experienced during World War II. At least it kept my interest in that almost 12 hour flight home.