• Address: Chantilly, VA 20153 (map)
• Date Posted: 11/04/09

The Second World War by John Keegan (copyright 1989). This edition (copyright 2000) is part of The Library of Military History series from Easton Press. This book, which is currently available from the publisher only through subscription to the series, is in excellent condition.
Easton Press volumes are among the most beautiful and durable books available today. Each volume is bound in genuine leather with a hubbed spine and accented with 22-karat gold, and printed on acid-neutral paper. The Smyth-sewn pages have gilded edges and are complemented by a sewn-in satin ribbon page marker and distinctive endleaves.
To show why Keegan’s book is considered by many to be the best one-volume history of World War II, I quote from the foreword:
“No attempt to relate [the war’s] causes, course and consequences in the space of a single volume can fully succeed. Rather than narrate it as a continuous sequence of events, therefore, I decided from the outset to divide the story of the war into four topics – narrative, strategic analysis, battle piece and ‘theme of war’ – and to use these four topics to carry forward the history of the six main sections into which the war falls: the War in the West, 1939-43; the War in the East, 1941-3; the War in the Pacific, 1941-3; the War in the West, 1943-5; the War in the East, 1943-5; and the War in the Pacific, 1943-5.
“Each section is introduced by a piece of strategic analysis, centering on the figure to whom the initiative most closely belonged at that time – in order, Hitler, Tojo, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt – and then contains, besides the appropriate passages of narrative, both a relevant ‘theme of war’ and a battle piece. Each of the battle pieces has been chosen to illustrate the nature of a particular form of warfare characteristic of the conflict. They are air warfare, airborne warfare, carrier warfare, armored warfare, city warfare and amphibious warfare. The ‘themes of war’ include war supply, war production, occupation and repression, strategic bombing, resistance and espionage, and secret weapons.”
Numerous photographs and maps accompany the 608 pages of eminently readable text.
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