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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 11:43, 10 July 2013
, 11:43, 10 July 2013no edit summary
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{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Dimbleby
|title=Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein - the Battle that Turned the Tide
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=El Alamein is a totemic British battle, standing as it does with others which turned the tide of our fortunes. The Allies were still smarting from the effects of Dunkirk and harbouring the knowledge that had Hitler elected to press his advantage then the situation could have been very different. Churchill is often quoted as saying that there were no victories before El Alamein and no defeats afterwards. This isn't true - 'it seemed that' is generally omitted from the beginning of the quote - but it does sum up the fact that the battle turned the tide of ''perception'' as well as the fortunes of war, which was quite an achievement for fighting which took place on land to which none of the major participants had any legitimate claim.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684455</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=A Holocaust memoir. There, I've said it, and in one fell swoop I've consigned this book to a niche market, and a small – and very much over-supplied – audience. Such books do find it difficult to get their heads above the parapet and the voice within heard, and it seems they have slowly filled in all the gaps in the available knowledge about the Holocaust. But that's the point that makes those words sound churlish – every life that survived that nightmare has to fill in a gap, and account for those who committed the crimes and those that helped out and rescued a survivor, and serve as monument to those six million gaps it created. Luckily, mostly on account of location, this book certainly does serve to fill in a wider gap in our perception of WWII than most.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906509263</amazonuk>
}}