The Story of World War II

“A magisterial work” of WWII history, now in a new edition “incorporating vast amounts of new information, interviews with combatants” and more (Booklist).

Historian Henry Steele Commager wrote The Story of World War II in 1945—on the heels of Allied victory. Its unique blend of historic analysis and firsthand accounts made it an instant classic. Now Donald L. Miller draws on previously unpublished archives to offer a vastly expanded and revised edition that is nothing short of “a major publishing event” (David McCullough).

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.