The Second World War

John Keegan, the most widely read military historian of our time and the author of The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command, now uses his extraordinary talent and resources to recount the strategies and battles of the greatest war in the history of civilization⁠—the Second World War. Keegan has investigated leadership (The Mask of Command), naval warfare (The Price of Admiralty), and battlefield strategy (The Face of Battle). Combining his knowledge of these areas with his empathy for the foot soldier, the cog of the war machine. Keegan leads the reader to understand more fully the human proportions of World War II.

Much more than a mere chronological narrative, the history of the war is recounted both periodically and thematically. Treating each theater of war⁠—the war in the West, the war in the East, the war in the Pacific⁠—according to the “strategic dilemma” faced by the leaders, Keegan analyzes five crucial battles, each of which he finds characteristic of a distinctive kind of warfare of the period. By examining the airborne battle of Crete, the carrier battle of Midway, the tank battle of Falaise, the city battle of Berlin, and the amphibious battle of Okinawa, Keegan illuminates the course of the war with the perception and insight that have won him the acclaim of both critics and readers.

John Keegan’s The Second World War is an extraordinary, definitive history, one that only Keegan could have defined and written. It’s a book which will be required reading for generations to come.