Martin Gilbert’s The Second World War: A Complete History,
is indeed a complete history. This an all-encompassing
book, but Gilbert does leave out some crucial parts of the war. He does not begin World War II with the
hostilities between Japan and China.
This is a general trend in this work: the Pacific theater gets short
shrift; Gilbert is far more interested in Europe. Gilbert was British, and this book is also
written far more from the British prospective than any other. At times, it seems Gilbert forgets the
American involvement in the war.
His prose is also flat and uninspired. Often, it reads with all the verve of
a Wikipedia entry. For such a long work,
some clever use of language would have been a welcome element.
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