World War II Database

After every few books, I like a little change. Sometimes, I switch from one theater of war to another. Other times, I switch between books written by soldiers and books written by scholars. This month, since my schedule is relatively busy with holiday shopping and family visits, I decided to go with something that can be read in pieces whenever I have time, Arm Chair Reader World War II.

The book is a collection of about 40 or 50 short essays, written concisely that most of them wrap up within two to three pages. Topics of the essays vary greatly, almost giving me an element of surprise when I go from one essay to the next. As I finish the stories of the brave folks who risked their own lives to help hide Jewish refugees, I get a short essay on why Adolf Hitler feared the Freemasons; upon the end of the Freemasons piece, the editor presented me the facts on how much women workers contributed to the American war-time economy. Overall, the topics ranged from little-known trivia to popular tales, making the book a very fun read.

In between some of the essays, the editor filled in the gap with World War II timelines, fast facts, and other bits of information that are as interesting as the essays.

Arm Chair Reader World War II is written a bit in an unconventional method. Like a traditional book that presents information sequentially from cover to cover, the essays are presented generally in chronological order. However, because each essay is independent from the next, I can open up the book just about at any page and start reading from there. I find this approach rather innovative and refreshing.

Unfortunately, with a scope so large, sometimes small mistakes are overlooked. For example, the essay on the Battle of Midway included only previous understandings of the battle without regard to the new information published by Jon Parshall and Tony Tully in Shattered Sword. There are also some minor inconsistencies, such as mixed usage of Postal Map, Wade-Giles, and Pinyin systems when referring to Chinese geography. Though the various inconsistencies were rather noticeable, I do not consider them major flaws. The rich content by far makes up for such trivial inconsistencies and relatively minor mistakes. I imagine such issues will be corrected in the next edition of the book.

Arm Chair Reader World War II is filled with a lot of entertaining and intriguing trivia. It is going to remain on my desk for a while so I can thumb through the stories as I get time here and there. If you do not mind, I am going to wrap up this book review now; I am dying to find out how exactly Marvel superheroes Captain America and Wonder Woman participated in World War II.

Visitor Submitted Comments

Show older comments