"The American Heritage Picture history of World War II" (used book)

The American Heritage Picture history of World War II

by American Heritage Publishing Company, Inc.

About the Book

Used Book. Hardcover. Dust jacket included. Dust jacket torn. Good condition except for dust jacket

-- From the dust jacket

The American Heritage Picture History of World War II is the largest, most inclusive single-volume picture history of the war ever published. Here the sweep, the drama and the tragedy of the global cataclysm that involved 56 nations are covered with the immediacy and impact that only great pictures can evoke. In planes and foxholes, desert and jungle, on ships and beaches, the constant focus is on the people involved – the leaders, the fighters, the victims.

From the first strike of the Wehrmacht on Poland in 1939 to the Japanese surrender on the deck of the Missouri in 1945, the war is shown and described so that its significance is seen in historical perspective while its human impact is powerfully felt.

The book is designed to convey a broad and balanced understanding of the complex, scattered events of those momentous years, from the war’s origin in 1919 to its murky aftermath. The vast story unfolds in hundreds upon hundreds of carefully selected pictures and their succinct captions, and in the running narrative of C. L. Sulzberger, the authoritative and skilled journalist, who saw much of the war at first hand.

In addition, the book is highlighted by scores of quotations from men and women who set down at the time the historic actions they witnessed. Among those quoted are Edward R. Murrow in London; William L. Shirer in Nuremberg; Joseph Goebbels; Antoine de Saint-Exupery; General Ridgway; a Berlin housewife; a kamikaze pilot; an Englishman at Dunkirk; an American co-pilot on the Regensburg raid; a Marine Sergeant on Guam…

The 720 pictures in World War II (92 are in colour) were painstakingly assembled form official and private collections around the world. Many are action photographs that demonstrate the then new-found power of the 35-millimeter camera as a historian’s tool. Some are from captured enemy files of art and photographs.

At least 140 have never before been published in this country. Some of the latter were found in Russia, where American Heritage researcher were the first to see material that had been kept from the public for more than 20 years. Others never seen before came from scattered collection of people who happened to be on hand with cameras when history was being made: a Dutch photographer in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation…a German dentist who survived the war in Russia…and even General Erwin Rommel, who photographed his desert war for himself.

In addition to its wealth of photographs, paintings, drawings, and posters. The American Heritage Picture History of World War II contains 18 specially drawn maps of the war’s major military operations, and there are 45 colour drawings of the war’s famous aircraft and armoured vehicles.