I saw this book mentioned on a goodreads newsletter about eight months ago, I think, and immediately put it on hold at the library. I had been wanting to read a book about the Blitz ever since reading Blackout and All Clear, which I enjoyed but also found myself lacking the historical grounding to really understand what was happening to Britain at that stage of the war.
When I started the book, my impression for some reason had been that it was a look at the Blitz from the point of view of a Londoner, but in fact it's actually a telling of Churchill's first year as Prime Minister, from May of 1940 until the following spring. It relies on the diaries of one of his private secretaries and his daughter, Mary, as well as correspondence between Churchill and many other major players in the war, including Roosevelt. I found the framing to be very effective, and an extremely detailed and yet readable first read on a historical event that I knew relatively little about. The last couple of years I have been deliberately attempting to fill in a lot of the blanks I have in my understanding of history, both through historical fiction and then through popular history books, and it's making me revisit other pieces of media that I didn't fully understand because I lacked the necessary context. If you're at all interested in a book that explores how the Blitz began, what England did (and didn't do) in response, America's involvement in the war prior to Pearl Harbor, and how the Blitz ended, I highly recommend reading this.
Grade: A
When I started the book, my impression for some reason had been that it was a look at the Blitz from the point of view of a Londoner, but in fact it's actually a telling of Churchill's first year as Prime Minister, from May of 1940 until the following spring. It relies on the diaries of one of his private secretaries and his daughter, Mary, as well as correspondence between Churchill and many other major players in the war, including Roosevelt. I found the framing to be very effective, and an extremely detailed and yet readable first read on a historical event that I knew relatively little about. The last couple of years I have been deliberately attempting to fill in a lot of the blanks I have in my understanding of history, both through historical fiction and then through popular history books, and it's making me revisit other pieces of media that I didn't fully understand because I lacked the necessary context. If you're at all interested in a book that explores how the Blitz began, what England did (and didn't do) in response, America's involvement in the war prior to Pearl Harbor, and how the Blitz ended, I highly recommend reading this.
Grade: A
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