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The Story of World War II: Revised, expanded, and updated from the original text by Henry Steele Commanger | 
 enlarge | Authors: Donald L. Miller, Henry Steele Commager
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 473649
Media: Paperback
Edition: Rev Exp
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 704
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0743227182
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.53
EAN: 9780743227186
ASIN: 0743227182
Publication Date: October 22, 2002
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Amazon.com Review
In 1945, the noted historian Henry Steele Commager, then employed by the U.S. Office of War Information, published The Story of World War II, a comprehensive survey of a struggle still terribly fresh. Donald Miller, himself an accomplished historian, amplifies Commager's work with this substantially revised edition. Drawing on oral histories and on the vast body of literature that followed the original edition, Miller writes vividly of the key events that shaped the progress of the war, from Dunkirk to the surrender of the Japanese government aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. Along the way, he examines the war as it played out on many fronts, incorporating the memories of women defense workers, German and Japanese combat veterans, and the ordinary Allied soldiers whom correspondent Ernie Pyle called "doggies." The text is thoroughly illustrated with period photographs, maps, and sidebars, adding both to its immediacy and its usefulness as a reference work. Concentrating on the war through American eyes, Miller and Commager's book is far from definitive. Even so, it makes an important addition to the growing library of work devoted to the era, and readers with an interest in World War II will learn much from its pages. --Gregory McNamee
Product Description
Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought -- and whose outcome was in greater doubt -- than readers might imagine. This is the war that Americans at the home front would have read about had they had access to the previously censored testimony of the soldiers on which Miller builds his gripping narrative. Miller covers the entire war -- on land, at sea, and in the air -- and provides new coverage of the brutal island fighting in the Pacific, the bomber war over Europe, the liberation of the death camps, and the contributions of African Americans and other minorities. He concludes with a suspenseful, never-before-told story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, based on interviews with the men who flew the mission that ended the war.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 PC WWII for American children August 23, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is kind of a short summary of the second world war from an exclusively American point of view. Commanger's original work stands on its own and is far superior to Miller's overtly PC rewrite. Why Miller went out of his way to butcher someone else's book is really unexplainable.
For a historian, he doesn't have a good command of the war except at a superficial kind of level. He makes up for that with lots of personal stories of men who fought in the war. What you are getting here is the equivlent of a PC American high school version of the war. And if thats what your looking for, have at it I guess.
The original version would get five stars from me. This butchered rewrite obviously does not.
 The Truth, Plain and Simple August 12, 2008
More than any other book I've ever read, this book tells the truth about what happened in WWII, and about warfare. The key is the first-hand accounts. We all know in general what happened, with Nazis attacking and so forth, but this book gets you inside the events through the words of participants. This tremendous tragedy is often heart-breaking, but incredibly important. Again and again the lessons of history are ignored, or never even noticed, by world leaders. This book brings about a greater understanding of the real, ruthless nature of the United States, and of great leaders such as FDR. For example, FDR personally emphasized the necessity to bomb German and Japanese cities, not only to destroy industry, but also because he wanted these nations to turn away from war from the top to the bottom. The fire-bombing in Tokyo and the German city of Dresden, for example, intentionally created fire storms of immense ferocity and total devastation. While the ruthlessness of FDR may be startling, what should be more startling is his profound insight. Japan and Germany in fact did turn away from war and through FDR's plans such as the UN and the Marshall Plan, and were rehabilitated into leading peaceful Republics. The incredible, horrible truth of warfare is told here. There's a lot that I never heard about before. The African-American Red Tails, specifically created by Marshall and FDR, were incredible pilots with a tremendous record who were in demand by bomber squadrons. Patton was deeply prejudiced but used black tankers, who were among the best. The Japanese GI squadrons in Italy, including Senator Inouye, were lethally heroic. It ain't pretty. For example, U.S. GIs used 50 caliber machine guns to mow down Nazi SS guards who had been rounded up at a concentration camp, but were still taunting emaciated camp prisoners. The GIs were outraged by the camp. It was filmed, but the film vanished. In the Pacific, the war was a war of extermination against an enemy with a suicidal ideology, featuring dominating American Naval power, enormous bombardments by the Navy and the Army Air Force that never worked as well as hoped against ingenious Japanese positions, brutal flame-throwing tanks and other American firepower, but it still devolved to hand-to-hand combat. Much of the conduct of the Japanese I have never heard about in realistic detail, including hideous abuse of POWs, targeting of the wounded, massacres of civilians and other atrocities in which Hirohito was complicit. Pentagon leaders should read about how we beat the ideologically suicidal Japanese soldiers in the Pacific, to understand what it takes against modern threats like the Taliban and Al Queda. It ain't pretty, but it's what happened and it created the world of today.
An important read... March 27, 2008
I brought this book when it first came out, and have re-read it about 5 times since. This is simply the best book to cover the entire war that I have ever read. Every time I read it, I find something else that fixates me, and makes me glad that I was born well after any global conflict erupted. If you are hesitating, please buy this book. It is fantastic.
 wwii November 12, 2007
Book review of "The Story of World War II"
A good, comprehensive account of World War II by two professional, established historians, Donald Miller and Henry Commager. Presents both the big picture, strategic view as well as the front line, up close encounters experienced by enlisted men and junior officers.
One technical quibble, the type size is small and thin, so is difficult to read. Bold face would have helped.
A thorough account of World War II November 5, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My high school education prior to the reading of this book had World War II as some semi abstract event consisting of Nazis, Kamikaze pilots, The Holocaust, the dropping of the nuclear bomb. After reading this book, I feel I have a much more thorough and detailed understanding of World War II, from start to finish. I have a pretty good grasp of everything that was involved in the decisions that were made, rather than some abstraction.
Besides providing a detailed account of events, this book also provides correspondence and quotes from people on both sides of the battlefields, which fleshes out the reality of many of the battles. It certianly doesn't track every individual soldier, but it lets you know pretty well the kind of brutality and hardship that the soldiers involved in any given battle must have faced. The tragedies and the heroism involved in the battles and campaigns of the war are touched just upon the surface I imagine, but just the same, this account of World War II is moving not only in it's honest portrayal of the brutality that mankind is capable of, but also the nobility that mankind is capable of. There is also an accounting of the people who were able to look past the slights they'd suffered in America and see the true enemy of fascism. The contribution of blacks from the 1940's south, and of japanese-americans who had relatives being held in camps in America, are accounted for in both the european battlefront and the pacific battlefront. While such a thing is usually portrayed for political correctness, the accounts in this book are about individuals rather than groups, which preserves the true heroism of the individuals described.
I highly reccomend this book to anyone who would like to have a more thorough understanding of World War II. It will take a few months of dedicated reading to read through it all, and I found myself taking a day off sometimes just because of how powerful some events were, but when you are done with the read, you'll have a gift of knowledge that you will in turn want to share with your family and friends.
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