The Second World War
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The Second World War
Narrated by:
Sean Barrett
Buy Now for £16.99
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Narrated by:
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Sean Barrett
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By:
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Antony Beevor
About this listen
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.
Read by Sean Barrett
(p) 2012 Orion Publishing Group©2012 Antony Beevor
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Critic reviews
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)
Beevor can be credited with single-handedly transforming the reputation of military history (David Edgar)
The myriad pieces of this intricate kaleidoscope are pieced together with exemplary skill ... This is a splendid book, erudite, with an admirable clarity of thought and expression (Roger Moorhouse)
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)
You feel yourself being carried along on the narrative flow, channelled this way and that through the pools and rapids by Beevor's expert helmanship (Patrick Bishop)
Brocaded with details of the great campaigns and thoughtful explanations of Hitler's murderous belligerence, The Second World War is an absorbing, unsparingly lucid work of military history (Ian Thomson)
Beevor's book is a pleasure to read and an example of intelligent, lively historical writing at its best (Tony Barber)
This is as comprehensive and objective an account of the course of the war as we are likely to get, and the most humanly moving to date (John Gray)
A British historian of great distinction and range, who ... demonstrates his mastery of his sources (Gordon Craig)
A magnificent performance - true excitement from one page to the next delivered in faultless prose (Christoper Silvester)
Beevor is excellent at catching the individual in the flood-tide of events (John Lewis-Stempel)
The book could not really have been done better
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)
A truly outstanding historian of war (Michael Howard)
Everyone who is interested in the Second World War should read this book. (Laurence Rees)
The book that Beevor has been building towards writing - and everybody else has been anticipating reading. (Donal O'Donoghue)
remarkably well-written and informative (Norman Stone)
This is the place to begin if you need to get your knowledge of the war in order. (Hew Strachan)
This is history writ large. (James Owen)
the whole story told in the author's usual erudite yet highly readable prose
The heart of Beevor's appeal is precisely that straightforward narrative approach, coupled with his lively, engaging style and his use of memorable, almost cinematic, set-pieces.
He is the most humanitarian of historians, and covers huge sweeps of history through the real stories of the individuals who experienced them. Reading this will be like having him walk me through the history of the war like a personal guide. (Kate Mosse)
This is a book demanding to be read. (Christoper Bray)
DWISOTT
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What did you like most about The Second World War?
I liked the comprehensive way this book broke down the huge story, spanning many individual conflicts and ideologies, into understandable and easily digestible segments.What was one of the most memorable moments of The Second World War?
I think the realisation that the leaders of the Allied cause I had been taught to revere as a child were in many ways as deeply flawed as the Japanese, Russians and the Germans, together with the realisation of just how much sheer luck was involved in the allies winning the war.What about Sean Barrett’s performance did you like?
The reader was excellent. His delivery of some of the more horrific facts was sombre and responsible.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I think the passages dealing with the suffering of the ordinary people caught up in a war they could not do anything to influence or stop. You could not listen to the sections on the suffering of the jews, Roma and Slavs and the ordinary Russians without being deeply moved.Any additional comments?
It is a sober and clearly stated explanation of the causes, execution and consequences of the second world war. It is not easy to listen to in parts, particularly the section on the liberation of the concentration camps, but it is important to understand the past to avoid repeating the same mistakes again. It has also shown me that some of the long held beliefs surrounding the war and its causes are wrong but are still influencing thinking today.This is a fascinating and distrubing read
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If you are interested then get this one first and then go back and get his other books for more detail on what happened.
It's grim but what do you expect.
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myths surrounding some of the great leaders are thoroughly dispelled in the narrative e.g. Montgomery and Churchill as classic examples of long held beliefs that I have held all my life.
Whilst the very long book provided many hours of entertainment I found myself often frustrated by the use of foreign language which invariably was not translated and not being a linguist I had no idea what was being referred to. However I found the whole experience thoroughly thought provoking if at times quite horrifying and gruesome. A terrible example of man's inhumanity to man as well as the futility of war!
The Second World War
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Excellent in every respect.
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