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Book review: “Inferno, The World at War, 1939-1945,” “The Second World War: A Military History” and “The Beauty and The Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War”

Readers who want to delve deeper into modern warfare and its consequences will find fulfillment in three new books, all huge and brimming with human dimensions. Two are devoted to World War II and one to the World War I.

A good starting point is a 730-page volume, “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945” (Knopf, $35), by Max Hastings, a British foreign correspondent, newspaper editor and author of more than 20 books.

Touted as a “truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences,” it meets that goal exquisitely. Not a mere recital of dates, places, battle strategy and casualties, the book looks at the consequences of war to people who live in occupied countries and the path of destruction that accompanies warfare. The human suffering and sacrifices will rip at the soul.

After the defeat of Germany, the war with Japan continued to rage, until the dropping of the atomic bomb. Though many U.S. citizens deplored entering the war, few can doubt that the world would have been a much worse place had it come to be ruled by Germany and Japan.

Another valuable analysis of the war is Gordon Corrigan's “The Second World War: A Military History” (St. Martin's Press, $35). A member of the British Commission for Military History and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Corrigan also wrote “Mud, Blood and Poppycock” and “Blood, Sweat and Arrogance.”

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