Another War Book
Review of All Hell Let Loose: The World At War 1939 - 1945 by Max Hastings Harper Press, 2011 My well-worn copy of this book I have long been fascinated with why human beings of one nation make war on another. Another lifelong preoccupation has been what motivates some of our kind to dominate and subjugate others. As individuals we are complex creatures, and as groups or nations we are equally complicated, if not more so. The intertwining evils of hate and its concomitant violent consequences have cast ominous shadows over human cultures since the dawn of civilisation. Max Hastings' 750 page tome is an amazingly comprehensive account of the Second World War that is based chiefly on thousands of individual accounts from all nations involved in that dreadful cataclysm that befell humankind between the years 1939 and 1945. In short, what we get in Hastings' brilliant and comprehensive tome is a "worm's eye" of the greatest tragedy that befell humankin...