The Second World War - Antony Beevor - 9781780225647

A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.

The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert.

Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor’s The Second World War never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in this, the most terrible war in history.

"His singular ability to make huge historical events accessible to a general audience recalls the golden age of British narrative history, whose giants include Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle" - Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT

"Beevor can be credited with single-handedly transforming the reputation of military history" - David Edgar, GUARDIAN

"A truly outstanding historian of war" - Michael Howard, STANDPOINT

"A British historian of great distinction and range, who ... demonstrates his mastery of his sources" - Gordon Craig, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

"His accounts of the key moments in the Second World War have a sense of colour, drama and immediacy that few narrative historians can match" - Dominic Sandbrook, SUNDAY TIMES

"If you want to understand the war as military struggle, this book is all you really need. However well you thought you knew the subject, you will learn something new on every page." - Neill Denny, WE LOVE THIS BOOK

Antony Beevor is the author of Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (Runciman Prize), Stalingrad (Samuel Johnson Prize, Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthornden Prize), Berlin: The Downfall, The Battle for Spain (Premio La Vanguardia), D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (Prix Henry Malherbe and the RUSI Westminster Medal), The Second World War, Ardennes 1944 (Prix Médicis shortlist) and Arnhem. The number one bestselling historian in Britain, Beevor's books have appeared in thirty-three languages and have sold over eight million copies. A former chairman of the Society of Authors, he has received a number of honorary doctorates. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London. He was knighted in 2017.