Blood, Tears and Folly - Hardcover

Deighton, Len

4.17

669 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022403135X ISBN 13: 9780224031356

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1993

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This study sets the drama of war on a world stage, and examines why, 50 years on, the lessons of World War II - when humanity was consumed by violence and destruction - still reverberate unheeded. Beginning with the political and industrial roots in the Great War of 1914-1918, Deighton unfolds the advance of the Axis powers from the Battle of the Atlantic to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. By 1942, the civilized world was brought to the brink of ruin. Yet now again racial hatred rears its head, turmoil continues over Middle-Eastern oil, Britain neglects education and its industrial base, and recession threatens new trade wars and economic migration on a fightening scale. Len Deighton is the author of "Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain", "The Battle of Britain" and "Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk". He is also the author of the spy novels, "The Ipcress File" and "Game, Set and Match".

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Review:

This is an absolute landmark as regards the history of the Second World War. It is a remarkable achievement... There is quite simply no-one to touch Len Deighton as a historian of that conflict. (Jack Higgins)

Blood, Tears and Folly, his most ambitious book yet, is a global history of "the darkest hour of the Second World War", from the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Each section, moreover, is set against a deep background which locates the particular chain of events in a large historical perspective... What wonderful stuff it is! Every page of Deighton's work glows with the excitement of discovery. (Geoff Dyer Guardian)

His instinct for reality is as sharp as his ability to convey it. (Martin Gilbert Sunday Times)

Here is historical "truth" of a type which will not date, as the sometimes arid debates of professional historians can. (Keith Jeffery The Times Literary Supplement)

A splendid read. He has a novelist's eye for the sort of facts that bring a narrative to life. (John Grigg Evening Standard)

Book Description:

After Fighter and Blitzkrieg, Len Deighton now sets a drama of war on a world stage, revealing the reality of global conflict in moving individual accounts by participants at every level. 'Remarkable and absorbing. . . an absolute landmark as regards the history of the Second World War.' Jack Higgins (1994-12-06)

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