3.5

It feels like it has been 500 years but it has been only almost 3 weeks.

Anyways an excellent perfectly constructed history of WWII but alas I only read this because I want to read Hastings’ entire backlist so I suffered a bit due to my general disinterest in WWII

As a product of the US education system and a college History major, let me tell you that I learned SO MUCH important information in this book about WWII that was never mentioned in any of my classes! If you're curious about WWII, geopolitics, or just what your grandfather went through in "the War", read (or listen) to this book.

Excellent one volume history of WW2

This took me a long time to complete and in fact I put it down many times and started over with my reading of it. However that was due more to the heavy material and nature of the book rather than the difficulty level of it. I appreciated the author's attempt to bring together both the over arching themes of the war as well as the individual voices of the war.

Before I read this book I thought I had a smattering of WWII knowledge but wasn't really that 'up' on the subject. After reading this, I am happy to say that I was far more informed than I thought I was and now am even better informed thanks to this great 700 page synopsis of 6 years of the twentieth century.

The author does an incredible job of condensing WWII into one book that covers all the main points of the war and gives enough detailed information to make a person quite knowledgeable about these events.

I'm going to take a moment to just pat myself on the back. Over a month after beginning this beast, I have finally completed it. Spending hours and hours underlining and commenting in the margins - reading at a pace of slightly over 20pgs an hour - I'm so thankful to have committed that effort to this masterpiece:

Inferno completely changed my viewpoint on the Second World War. It provided incredible insight and horrific details that have sufficiently expanded my knowledge of the subject. I know the one volume history acts as an outline to the magnitude of the war itself, but I have still learned so much about it. I consider myself to be a history buff, yet this book has gone above what I could have ever imagined: I have used almost forty tabs on especially awesome quotes and figures.

It is the definitive one volume history on the war.

A very interesting and very good one volume work on World War II. It focused more on a layman's view of the war. Few bloated quotes from politicians and generals and more focus on the soldiers and civilians, which I found to be an interesting approach, even if it was clunky to start off. I've now read two single volume works on World War II and this one would be placed #2 on that list (Antony Beevor's book is a triumph) but I am happy I read it and found it very interesting and engaging.