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The Splendid and the Vile

a Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
Sep 27, 2020IrisLover77inGA rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is classic Erik Larson. What an interesting book. He has a knack for mixing official history as told by the figures that history books are made of and with accounts by the common individual who is experiencing the history that the figures in history books create. The reader learns about behind the scenes of world events and little things that never make history books. Churchill comes to office as the rest of Europe is falling to Germany. Churchill has to find the way to keep England from falling and get the help from the US that England needs to survive He does an excellent job letting the reader know about Churchill's big personality and how Churchill became the symbol of British resistance to the common man. You learn about Churchill's courting Roosevelt and learn how the British resilience effects the Nazi upper leaders. Hess makes a daring journey to Scotland to try to broker peace and sees the rest of the war from jail. Larson was fortunate to have dairies created by the "man in the street" for the Mass Observation Project. They tell of the roofs pierced with shrapnel, the windows broken and not repaired due to shortages of glass, the Londoners spend the night in subway shelter during the raids and how the exiled royalty from Norway spent their nights, individuals pinching themselves to see if they are still alive after a particularly devastating air raid. The reader gets a good picture of the British "stiff upper lip" and their determination to survive. I gave the book 4 stars because it is 500 pages long. It is overly long even though it is good. It was too much information. I wish he had condensed the book to about 400 pages. It was repetitive at times. But I strongly recommend it. No one writes history the way Erik Larson does.