World War Two in Photographs: The Imperial War Museum [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

I had already been impressed by "WWI In Photographs" by the same authour. WWII, however, has been more impresed and contains a larger number of pictures than the former. Do not expect too much from the comments from the authour -please, do not missunderstand- since although they are accurate, they are also brief (this is clearly a "pictures" book).

First, let me start by saying the collection of photographs are fantastic. Although there are some definite iconic photos we all have seen from WWII, this book has a great deal to offer in showing another side to the war especially for Americans who want to get a larger view of action in the European theater. The pictures are well labeled and accurate and the books design of designating the pictures to their appropriate year is stellar. Americans have a very rich library of war footage and pictures from WWII but I would like to see more of these pictures from other countries, including my own (Canada).

However the reader should be warned that the insert and chapter text is biased to say the least. It becomes very obvious to the reader that the author thoroughly despises Americans to the point where you will find more compliments given about the Germans. I have no problem with authors taking pride in their country's accomplishments and putting them out there for the rest of the world to read (and Britain has many of them worth reading about during WWII to be sure) but not at the expense of belittling your allies out of personal hatred especially when it is meant to be an historical account. The author reaches his greatest moments of disillusion when he calls operation Market Garden a "near success" that would have worked except apparently in his perceptions only the British did any kind of fighting at all. This is often repeated about other actions in the book as Americans being soundly lazy and failing with little or very bad intelligence. We hit a high point of ?????? when he claims that the English came to America to build the atomic bomb (a group effort by many different peoples) and that the English basically won the Pacific theater war......... and then America dropped two atomic bombs.

The difference between his rather stellar picture captions and his personal text make you feel as if you are reading a book written by two different authors. Had Holmes left out his personal take on history and rather sour opinion of the Yanks this book would easily be a 5 star reference.

The vast majority of allied photographs in this volume are of British or Australian forces. One would think that the United States only provided a token force towards the effort. The compiler is a British professor and his bias towards the Queen's men is beyond apparent, it is laughable. Major engagements and critical turning points of the war are all but ignored if the Brits played a small role while silly skirmishes that involved British soldiers are given pages of material. I laughed when I read the previous comment about the lack of Canadians, they were probably excluded because they were too "American" for the compiler.

This would be a nice supplemental volume for someone who already owns a few WWII photographic albums. As a complete historical (or even complete outline-considering the vastness of the topic) it is dreadful. Many of the pictures are excellent but the title should be "A Photographic History of the British Empire in WWII". Perhaps that was the original title and an editor changed it to sell more copies.... Shame on them.