Rated ★★★★★
This is another book from my list of wonderful books I read years ago. It's books like this that make Historical Fiction my favorite genre as it's the easiest way for me to learn about history without having to read a bunch of dry history books.
The blurb on my library web site states that this book and it's sequel War and Remembrance capture all the drama, romance, heroism and tragedy of the Second World War. I agree with that statement. Also it's the last war that the United States flat out won so for that reason alone it's a unique achievement.
Wouk uses the fictional family of Naval Officer "Pug" Henry to spread out over the globe in order to give the story a unifying, human-level plot. But in order to make this work one has to totally suspend their disbelief at having the characters show up in every key situation and just sit back and enjoy the ride.
The only real problem I had with this book was with the parts that dealt with the Jewish daughter in law being trapped in Europe at the outbreak of the war. I recognized that Woulk was using this plot device in order to give the reader a clear picture of what happened to the Jews when the Nazi's came to power but I just can't do Holocaust stories. I am too much of a wuss and they give me bad dreams. So I just skipped that part of the story when it started to get bad.
Other than that it was an engrossing story and once again I had forgotten so much from my previous read that it was pretty much all new again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this period of history.