WWII

Economist.com:

Mr Davies's two main weapons are the devastating statistic and the unexpected comparison. Stalin's death camps killed more people than Hitler's. America's army in 1939 was smaller than Poland's. The casualties of the 1944 Warsaw uprising were the equivalent of the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre, every day for two months.

The effect is powerful and, for the most part, convincing. The war was an appalling and complicated mess, in which heroism, individual and collective, was balanced and often outweighed by cowardice, cruelty and incompetence, and—worse—dreadful compromises and surrenders dictated by realpolitik and dressed up in the language of patriotism and morality. After reading this book, not every reader will rethink his or her view of the war altogether, but most will find their thinking enriched and stimulated by new facts and viewpoints. The muscular prose and spiky jokes are treats too.