War and Remembrance

I bought both books by Herman Wouk to read one after the other. I really liked the first one, The Winds of War, but felt that it was a bit too limited in scope. So I gave it four stars. This one, I feel, was much better. It should all aspects of the war both in types of battles fought and the human impact of the Holocaust. For a book that is thirteen hundred pages long, I found it to be totally absorbing and I couldn't put it down. I was especially interested in the younger son, Byron and his Jewish wife, Natalie. I must say that there is a great deal of detail in the battle scenes, especially those on the water. I was less interested in that and so I simply skimmed the parts that I was less interested in. I was also a bit annoyed at the narration of the fictional character, General Roon. Mr. Wouk could simply have narrated these sections in his own voice, without having to correct the biases of this fictional Nazi general. Nevertheless, I find this book to be exceptional reading and I highly recommend it!

Carefully researched history, wrapped a beautiful (fictional) love story. It tells the story of the holocaust, from many viewpoints: Jews in Europe before the war, their treatment in the early war years, the concentration camps, and the world’s horribly slow response to their systematic murder.This is the third time I have read The Winds of War (volume one of this story) and War and Remembrance volume two). They are not standalone works, and must be read as one book. The writing is brilliant, as all of Wouk’s books are. Be prepared to weep; this is a deeply heartfelt tale.

I intended to separately review "The Winds of War", then "War and Remembrance", but the author's design of the work is far to well integrated for this idea to create anything but a diversion from what the work represented. Take this as a combined work for both volumes. They are vastly different in scope and focus, but must be seen as essentially one work.First a word about editions. I bought both for the Kindle, and feel a little swindled. Book 1 was okay--I mean, it was great, and the Kindle version was properly executed. CLEARLY, however, no one from the publisher or Amazon proof-read "War & Remembrance". It was a disaster. Bad enough that the artistic impact of the work was diminished. Amazon should offer some sort of guarantee for what it sells. Typos were common and serious through the first 80% of the book. I'm not sure whether I had just become more adept at ignoring them, or if there were less of them towards the end. This was a poorly produced offering--certainly not worth the ten dollars I paid for it. Searching the B&N "Nookbook" site, I find no mention of this poor production, but the Amazon site is loaded with disappointed purchasors. Maybe it's only bad in Kindle. So much for bitching and bad-mouthing.The Winds of War captures events leading up to the United States entry into World War II, point of view being captured through the eyes of a career navy officer, his family, friends and acquaintances. It's a wonderful story, quickly engulfing the reader in its narrative. I cared about Capt. Victor Henry, his wife Roda, his sons Warren and Bryan, their wives, etc. All characters were well-drawn and credible.War & Remembrance continues the story through the end of the war. It is not so artfully spun, but meticulously assembled.You see, this second book revealed the purpose of the entire effort. Wouk created an epic polemic of the holocaust disguised as a novel. That virtually everyone forges on through the thousand page (print edition)tome is an incredible tribute to his craft.Wouk artfully introduces Jewish characters (Winds of War)through the eyes of the Henry family to temporarily subordinate them. There are only two major Jewish characters; Dr. Aron Jastrow and his adult niece Natalie, for whom the first section of the book is named. Dr. Jastrow is a famous literati, having written a book-of-the-month club best seller, "A Jew's Jesus" which is excerpted in paraphrase through the first book and mentioned often in the second.Captain Henry's erratic wandering son Bryan has quit his graduate studies in Italy and taken up residence with the eminent Dr. Jastrow as a research assistant of sorts. Jastrow is working on a book about the Emperor Constantine. While he claims no special relationship with her, it is evident from his correspondence that he is in the thrall of niece Natalie. This serves as the beginning pivot and secondary focus of both volumes. The Jastrow's (later Natalie Henry) become "stuck" in fascist Italy and go through a Homeric ordeal that ultimately carries them through various occupied areas of Europe, ending in Auschwitz.As I've said, the books are wonderfully crafted and a delight to read, but the story is secondary. Wouk uses the Jastrows to personify the holocaust. Their story accounts for over a third of the second book. At the same time, he offers an overview of the holocaust events, partially through the employment of another Jastrow, Aaron's cousin Berel. Berel stayed in the "old country"--Poland--with the rest of the clan after Aaron's father relocated his branch of the family in America.Berel is the Jewish superman. Seeing everything, doing everything and surviving everything. He takes his family eastward from the Nazi's during the fall of Poland, then re-emerges in Russia and, always in danger of capture, consistently avoids it until he joins the Russian army, where he is captured. Eventually (I've run the two books together here.) he is part of a work group of prisoners that digs up previously mass-murdered Jews and burns them.) He offers a cacaphony of sordid detail.Ironically, what is most admirable about these books is Wouk's deceit. Who would buy books advertised as a detailed reminiscence of the holocaust with heart-rending narratives of victims and survivors? Primarily, that's what this book is. The Holocaust (I don't like to NOT capitalize it.)is arguably the most important story that could be told. (The only possible rivals in importance being the book of Genesis and the Passion of Jesus Christ.) It's setting is WWII, which continues to attract enormous enthusiastic audiences. The triumph of good over ultimate evil: the risk of a war that threatened to end civilization--what a yarn! Millions would want (did)to read it.And just after you become worried about the future of truth, justice and the American way, Wouk lowers the boom on you. BAM! You are transported to the midst of the Holocaust. You see men of great personal presence forced to represent themselves as "filthy Jews". You struggle with them, first for simple survival, but then for hope and finally, dignity. You are overwhelmed by the monstrous evil that conceived of this plot told in graphic detail, and finally you are tormented by the individual fates of characters you've come to love and admire at the hands of the Wagnerian horde. At these moments, World War II is all but forgotten.

After finishing “The Winds of War” I tried very hard to take a break from the Henry family and to “save” the rest of the story for later. I lasted a week and I was back into their lives in this even longer second book. I had come to know and love these characters and I simply needed to know what happened to them all.I did learn the fates of all the family members and a few more besides. I also learned that Wouk did a tremendous amount of research for this book, just as he did with the first in the series, but in this case, he crammed most of it into the story. Wouk did a fantastic job in giving the reader a sense of the absolutely massive scale of this war. His descriptions of the advance of the German army into Russia give you a whole new appreciation for the endless landscape and the sheer audacity and insanity of the assault. And this was just one theatre of the war! Wikipedia tells me that Wouk spent thirteen years researching for the two Henry books and I cannot help but wonder that after the success of the first book his editor was a little lax and allowed Wouk to show all that research. This was most evident in the description of battles which were often recounted from more than one angle and prefaced with expository statements from the author. This made the book feel bloated and endless and not in a good way. I often felt impatient for Wouk to get back to the action! When reading “The Winds of War,” I really didn’t want it to end and with this I really did wonder if it would.Nonetheless, Wouk tells an amazing story. His characters are brilliant and I cared for each and every one of them. It is my understanding that Wouk moved closer to his Jewish roots as he got older and became more orthodox. This is clear from his focus on the treatment of the Jews in the war. His storyline involving Natalie Jastrow was very well-done and he treats the whole issue with great sensitivity and pathos, making clear how little regular people knew about the activities of the Nazis and the reluctance of the western powers to act on what could be perceived as war propaganda.Another aspect of the story that Wouk did an amazing job on was the plight of refugees. So often in war stories the focus is on the war and not on the impact this has on the civilian populations. Wouk captures the uncertainty, griminess and sometimes terror of civilians travelling in Europe during war time. I read this book travelling cattle class to Australia, a fifteen and half hour trek on one flight and a 32 hour total journey from start to destination and so I found those sections, while in no comparable, particularly compelling.I also really liked his telling of the American involvement in the war. As an Australian who grew up on a history of our country’s involvement in both the first and second world wars from the giddy-up, I have often teased Americans about coming late to the party. Wouk’s story gave me a new appreciation for the American contribution to WWII. The number of America lives lost in the conflict number in the hundreds of thousands, and should not be denigrated, it far exceeds the number of Australian deaths, but pales in comparison to the millions of lives lost in Europe. Nonetheless, America’s involvement ended the war. The American soldiers fought bravely, but it was the industrial might of America that swayed the course of war in favor of the Allies. Wouk’s description of Lend-Lease and the scale-up of American industry after Pearl Harbor is boggling and very impressive. Wouk’s suggestion that Roosevelt long wished to enter the war, but needed to manage public opinion was balanced well with his telling of these backdoor efforts to help the Allies. While I knew all these things, there was something about Wouk’s book that captured the massiveness of it all and what an accomplishment it was. While the teasing is all fun, the western world owes much to America’s effort.I enjoyed this book even though it was bloated. I miss the Henrys now I am done. Unfortunately, it was just not as well written as the first installment. Really a 3.75 star read.

After plodding my way through Winds of War something drew me back to read the sequel. Maybe having stuck with the Winds of War soap opera I was hooked (there was a bit of this). It certainly wasn’t the characters, though perhaps I was still hoping that they would suddenly spring into life in the second novel. Maybe, like a mountaineer with Mount Everest, I read it “because it was there”, or perhaps I just wanted a book that would lull me to sleep at night. But no, it was the history that drew me back. How would D-Day, the war in the Pacific, the fall of Berlin and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki play out? What would “Armin von Roon” have to say about it all? And ultimately, how would Herman Wouk (a practicing and devout Jew) handle the Holocaust?There is good news: War and Remembrance is definitely a much better book than its predecessor. The narrative moves where the Winds of War plods. The dull soap opera moves into the background, World War 2 moves to the foreground. Some of the characters get coloured in. There are far fewer moments of self-parody in the book’s prose (there were a lot of those in Winds of War). Overall there is an emotional resonance which was almost entirely lacking in the first book.To appreciate this, however, you need to have plodded through Winds of War first without which War and Remembrance makes much less sense. You also have to go through the first section of the novel which gave every indication that it was going to turn out even duller than the first volume. The Singapore section with its typically English colonial stereotypes was particularly insipid. I nearly gave up at this point.But the Singapore section is mercifully brief and then comes Midway. Wouk devotes 176 pages to the battle of Midway (including a chilling interlude in Auschwitz). He sees the US victory at Midway as the true turning point of the war. Warren Henry, a mere cipher in the first book, is used as a viewpoint character for the battle narrative. Midway also marks a turning point in the story – after this point some of the other characters start to come to life. Notable is the handling of the Holocaust plot involving Natalie Henry and her uncle Aaron Jastrow whose “Jew’s Journey” sections worked – a reminder that Wouk can write well when he puts his mind to it! Plus the development of the Byron Henry character carries echoes of Willie Keith the lead character in the Caine Mutiny, Wouk’s early novel which deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize.The difference between War and Remembrance and its predecessor isn’t quite night and day though. Some characters remain resolutely two-dimensional and the soap opera has not totally gone away either. I started to wonder if Rhoda Henry had a point other than to have extra-marital liaisons with members of the Manhattan Project. This part of the novel remained resolutely stuck in the twentieth century. But even here there are enjoyable moments. I found myself laughing out loud at Byron Henry’s confrontation with Hugh Cleveland half-way through the novel and, yes, I was wondering how the Pug Henry/Pamela romance would eventually resolve. Another thing to note, and I really didn’t think this when I started reading the Winds of War, it is too short! Around about page 1,000 the story had only reached late 1943, I found myself wondering how Wouk was going to get to August 1945 in slightly over 300 pages, was there a third novel lurking somewhere? And, yes, there is a sense that the story rushes to its conclusion. The real conclusion of the war narrative comes with the Battle Leyte Gulf (late 1944). The other narrative elements do reach a resolution, but major characters such as Leslie Slote and Berel Jastrow exit off-stage.But overall the war narrative carries the day. The novel is at its strongest when it's involved in the war in the Pacific or handling the holocaust. The Auschwitz scenes are harrowing, but have the ring of truth about them. And, yes, at the story’s conclusion Wouk confirms that he spoke to survivors to give authenticity. Certainly no one would dare to make this up! I felt towards the end of the novel that whole Holocaust section deserved to be edited into a higher calibre novel away from the surrounding soap opera.Yes, Wouk is attempting an American War and Peace here. No, he has not succeeded but, hey, that’s a very high bar. It’s not a Gone with the Wind for World War 2 either, but that’s another high bar. But what he has left is fine lengthy saga which works as a piece of creative non-fiction about World War 2. There are some great passages for the patient reader. If you enjoy a good soap and want to find out about the most dramatic events of the last hundred years, go and read it!

An amazing tale of such horror it is hard to imagine!People do terrible things to each other; in times of war and peace

Dopo Venti di Guerra della corale storia di una famiglia di militari USA che tra amici, parenti e nemici si interseca attrverso i vari fronti della II Guerra Mondiale con sullo sfondo l'Olocausto. I meno giovani ricorderanno anche le due serie TV tratte da questi libri con Robert Mitchum come protagonista. I volumi originali vennero tradotti all'epoca e adesso sono di difficile reperibilità. Per chi li ha letti a suo tempo l'occasione per rileggerli in formato kindle (pure in offerta) L'Autore, noto soprattutto per l'Ammutinamento del Caine, ha scritto diversi volumi dedicati alla guerra, forte anche delle sue esperienze come ufficiale combattente della US Navy, tenendo anche conto delle sue origini ebraiche (vedi i due volumi dedicati alla nascita dello stato di Israele, pure disponibili in formato kindle).

This is Wouk’s follow up to the original epic tale told in The Winds of War. If you’re reading this then you probably read that, so you’ll be familiar with the characters and their soap opera lives. This second instalment, however, is a bit harder hitting as Wouk attempts the impossible task of wondering what it was like to participate in, or be a victim of, the Holocaust. The pages that focus on this aspect of the war don’t sit comfortably with the (interminable) ones that deal with the “romances” of the main players, and I grew rather frustrated with some of the old fashioned “she loves me, she loves me not” or “he loves me, he loves me not” guff that seems to go for ever. I also grew tired of the analysis of some of the major strategic battles of the war, although I suspected they were pretty good summaries of opposing arguments, despite being grounded firmly in an American view of how they won the war. According to this, the Yanks hardly put a foot wrong and, even when they did, it turned out they were still right.I’d say overall that if you’re at all interested in the Second World War and what it might have been like to live through it, the two books are worth reading. I finished thinking that in many ways the past is another country and they did do things differently there, but it’s not that foreign and not so long ago that you don’t wonder in awe about at how it could have happened? To think that I was born a mere thirteen years after the German state was gassing families and burning them in ovens, it’s almost beyond comprehension. Books like this are important in reminding people that it happened, and it happened to people (and was caused by people) fundamentally like we are. We’d be daft to think it couldn’t happen again.

This book was fascinating and helps to explain how so many countries in Europe and treaties were formed. So much of it is horrifying and had to be put aside before continuing. That one man could decide and almost succeed in destroying a nationality of human beings is hard to even imagine let a lone believe.we must learn never again to hate if we want to survive.