Description

By (author) Richard Overy; By (author) Overy, Richard Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORYSHORTLISTED FOR THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY”A masterpiece. It puts all previous single-volume works of the conflict in the shade” Saul David, The Times”This book is Richard Overy”s magnum opus … It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance with which argument and insight are interwoven in a fast-paced narrative” John Darwin, Times Literary Supplement A bold new approach to the Second World War from one of Britain”s foremost military historiansRichard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. He argues that this was the ”great imperial war”, a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.How war on a huge scale was fought, supplied, paid for, supported by mass mobilization and morally justified forms the heart of this new account. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath. This war was as deadly for civilians as it was for the military, a war to the death over the future of the global order. Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.

Review quoteMajestic and original … Overy has written many fine books, but Blood and Ruins is his masterpiece. At almost 1,000 pages, it puts all previous single-volume works of the conflict in the shade.Review quote

This book is Richard Overy”s magnum opus (in every sense of the phrase) … It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance with which argument and insight are interwoven in a fast-paced narrative … Extraordinarily compelling, and written with remarkable fluency.

Review quoteMonumental… [A] vast and detailed study that is surely the finest single-volume history of World War Two.Review quoteThis is a magnificent book that reflects the deep scholarship and humane judgment of a magisterial historian. Review quoteLet”s praise Overy”s stupendous achievement. Anybody interested in the why and how of boundless violence in the 20th century should make space for Blood and Ruins on his or her shelf. It will help you to grasp and revisit the carnage of 1931-45 as the largest event in human history. This book is not Eurocentric, but truly geocentric … it is history at its best.Review quoteRichard Overy has produced one of the most stunning accounts of the Second World War and the events that led up to it.Review quoteA magisterial new history … remarkable in span, depth and scholarship, impressive in sweep and vision, that rightly sees WW2 as starting in China in 1931 and recasts the conflict as a distorted sequel to an earlier epoch.Review quoteA truly global view of World War II … perhaps the single most comprehensive account of the Second World War yet to appear in one volume. You might think that by reading extensively, you could construct a book like this one. You could not … Richard Overy has done a signal servic