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Recent Reviews
Charles Spicer
Rave The Washington Post ... meticulously researched, vividly written ... The distinction between caving to the Nazis and wooing them can feel contrived at times, but Spicer insists that the men who guided the fellowship’s activities in this fraught period ultimately served their country better than generally recognized — despite the presence of some outright Nazi sympathizers in their midst ... One of the great virtues of Spicer’s book is that it brings Vansittart out of the shadows, exploring his critical role in bolstering the kind of policies championed by Winston Churchill: no compromises with Hitler ... This is a complex tale, but as skillfully narrated by Spicer, it moves along briskly. His main characters are not easy to characterize either, but he brings them to life, with all their contradictions.
Iain MacGregor
Rave The Wallstreet Journal Carefully researched ... This valuable addition to the body of work about Stalingrad goes a long way toward righting the balance between myth and reality. Mr. MacGregor vividly describes the frantic Soviet efforts to beat back Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’s Sixth Army as it reached the city ... MacGregor makes a compelling case that [Stalin] had begun to learn from his mistakes.
John Gooch
Positive The Washington Post John Gooch, a British historian whose specialty is the Italian military, puts Mussolini and his forces front and center. The result is a painstakingly detailed, long-overdue chronicle of the attempts by the smaller Axis power to play an outsize — and unrealistically ambitious — role in the global conflict. This somber account underscores the multiple failures of Mussolini’s leadership, which led to his ouster in 1943 and his ignominious execution by his countrymen at the end of the war. His body was left on display in Milan, dangling upside down alongside the body of his mistress ... Mussolini recognized sooner than Hitler did that they were fighting a losing battle against the Soviet Union, even urging him to try to make a separate peace again with Stalin. But it was far too late for another Nazi-Soviet pact — or for any other last-minute act of salvation. Italy was the first Axis power to fall, before Germany or Japan. In Gooch’s telling, Mussolini’s disastrous leadership allowed for no other outcome.
Owen Matthews
Positive The Wall Street Journal Sorge’s combination of recklessness and coolness under pressure, along with his reputation as an inexhaustible lover with dozens of conquests, has generated numerous volumes about his exploits. By building on those studies (which rely heavily on reporting from Japan) and carefully researching the Russian side of the story, Mr. Matthews, who has worked as a journalist for the Moscow Times and Newsweek, offers a fine addition to the literature of this remarkable man.... On occasion, Mr. Matthews overstates his case...Still, Mr. Matthews is right that Sorge’s actions had a huge impact.
Serhii Plokhy
Positive The Wall Street Journal Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe shows how the nuclear energy sector and the political system were largely discredited. It is no coincidence that the Soviet Union collapsed a mere five years later. Mr. Plokhy, who teaches Ukrainian history at Harvard, mercilessly chronicles the absurdities of the Soviet system and the arrogance of its apparatchiks. But the fact that he grew up fewer than 500 kilometers south of Chernobyl probably accounts for his vividly empathetic descriptions of the people on the ground—the plant managers and employees, the firefighters, soldiers and others—who risked their lives to contain the damage.