Max Hastings is the author of more than twenty books. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. He has received numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988. He lives outside London.
Praise for Inferno:
"The best one-volume history of the war yet written. . . . It is in
all ways a monumental achievement. . . . A relatively brief review
can only begin to indicate the depth, breadth, complexity and
pervasive humanity of this extraordinary book. The literature of
World War II is, as Hastings notes at the beginning of his
bibliography, so vast as almost to defy enumeration or
comprehension, but Inferno immediately moves to the head of the
list."
—The Washington Post
"Balanced and elegantly written prose. . . . Inferno is a
magnificent achievement, a one-volume history that should find
favor among readers thoroughly immersed in World War II and those
approaching the subject for the first time. As the years thin the
ranks of those who fought in the war, Hastings’s balanced and
elegantly written prose should help ensure that the bloodshed,
bravery and brutality of that tragic conflict aren't
forgotten."
—Associated Press
"A work of staggering scope and erudition, narrated with supreme
fluency and insight, it is unquestionably the best single-volume
history of the war ever written. . . . Oddly enough, good
single-volume histories of the war are relatively rare. By and
large, its sheer scope intimidates writers: while there are
hundreds of books about individual episode, from the Battle of
Britain to D-Day, surprisingly few historians have tried to pull
all the threads together. But Hastings, as the author of several
splendid volumes on various aspects of the conflict, is the ideal
candidate to conquer this historiographical Everest. His book
is at once a 'global portrait,' emphasizing events in Asia as well
as in Europe, and a 'human story,' saturated in the details of
ordinary people’s experience. . . . Hastings has a terrific grasp
of the grand sweep and military strategy of the war, showing how a
combination of Russian blood, American industry and German
incompetence made the allied victory inevitable. But what makes
this book so compelling are the human stories. . . . This is the
book he was born to write."
—The Sunday Times
"A fast-moving, highly readable survey of the entire war, in all
its phases and on all fronts . . . . This is military history at
its most gripping. Of all Max Hastings's valuable books, this is
possibly his best—a veritable tour de force. . . . Though the
Second World War has been the subject of immense historical
research, Max Hastings here demonstrates how much there is still to
know. . . . Hastings draws on eye-witness accounts and anecdotes
from soldiers of all armies to show graphically what the war was
like for the ordinary people who fought it, and, overwhelmingly,
how terrible it was for the combatants. While many of the frontline
commanders of each of the belligerent powers come in for some harsh
treatment for their ineptitude or bungling, the valour, heroism
and, above all, the extraordinary stoicism of their troops amid
scarcely imaginable pain, suffering and losses are repeatedly
highlighted."
—The Evening Standard
"A new, original, necessary history, in many ways the crowning of a
life’s work. A professional war correspondent who has personally
witnessed armed conflict in Vietnam, the Falkland Islands and other
danger zones, Hastings has a sober, unromantic and realistic view
of battle that puts him into a different category from the armchair
generals whose gung-ho, schoolboy attitude to war fills the pages
of a great majority of military histories. He writes with grace,
fluency and authority. . . . Inferno is superb."
—The New York Times Book Review
"If there is a contemporary British historian who is the chronicler
of World War II, it would be Max Hastings . . . [Inferno] is a true
distillation of everything this historian has learned from a
lifetime of scholarship—and more important, of real thought—on what
he calls 'the greatest and most terrible event in human
history.'"
—San Francisco Chronicle
"Compellingly different . . . a panoramic social history that not
only recounts the military action with admirable thoroughness,
crispness and energy but also tells the story of the people who
suffered in the war, combatants and civilians alike."
—The Wall Street Journal
"This book is packed with fascinating and surprising statistics and
facts . . . . Hastings has an extraordinary ability to throw a
bucket into the ocean of wartime papers, diaries, letters and
documents of every kind, and bring up something fascinating and
worthwhile every time."
—Financial Times
"[A] huge, majestic book . . . . The Second World War took place in
the skies, the oceans and the lands of five different continents.
It encompassed fighting in Arctic blizzards, as well as in jungles
and deserts. Any military history must encompass all of this and
more. And at the same time it must reconcile the grand strategy of
generals and politicians with the more violent experiences of
ordinary soldiers . . . Hastings shapes all these stories, almost
miraculously, into a coherent narrative. Overlaid upon this
tapestry is an analysis of how the war brought out the best and the
worst in people, how it could be won only through the use of
astonishing brutality and how it changed society forever."
—The Telegraph
"[Hastings’s] nine books on aspects of [World War II] have given
him a claim to be our pre-eminent military historian. In All Hell
Let Loose he attempts to tell the whole story in a single volume,
and succeeds triumphantly, combining fluid narrative with some
piercing insights and unsentimental judgments. . . . As this
enthralling book shows, in the right hands, the study of war – like
the study of sacred text – can generate and endless stream of new
meanings and insights, illuminating in their turn the wider
mysteries of existence."
—Standpoint
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