WWII Book Reviews - Criteria

I'm going to start reviewing WWII/ Military History books that I have read.

Anyone looking for reviews should click here (from a few weeks time i reckon)

Some of these have been useful for the WWII Magazine work I do - others just because they are interesting. I already did this once a bit - but want a bit more rigour.

I have developed a list of criteria to mark them by

Here follows a description of each criterion.

Mark out of /10 for the Novice

Mark out of /10 for the Expert

When you go into a shop or look online, there is no way of telling which, on the shelf of WWII Bombing Campaign books, is a good overview or more accessible - or which ones have detailed specs of cockpit designs and bombing-mission-protocols. 

The grade for Novice and Expert will indicate this - some will manage to balance them both - the gift of great writers like Keegan, Beevor, Hastings.

Many will veer towards the 'Expert'.

When I say Expert, I mean someone who knows the basics, has read a couple of general histories, has a couple of more specific areas of interest in WWII. 

When I say Novice, I mean someone who may have a basic understanding of WWII, but would find a lot of new material in most books that went beyond general histories. They would not be likely to engage with a specialised area of the war - unless it was made accessible for them (normally by excellent writing).

Editorial Criteria will be:

Editorial Quality /10

Does the writer look to social, economic, geographical and other, un-traditional angles on his subject?

How much new and original proposition/ arguments exist here?

Does the writer seem to favour or bias any one side of the conflict?

Does the writer use overly patriotic language to support his case?

Does the writer present a balanced view?

Human Scale /10

Does he reflect the humanity and experiences of combatants?

Does he reflect the humanity and experiences of civilians?

Does he cover the duality of celebration and misery in war?

Are there the unguessable, unique, original insights and moments?

Does he address the moral issues in war?

Order Of Battle /10

How much traditional Unit History is there?

How much history of individual battlefield deeds?

How much is there a blow by blow account of tactics and minutiae of the battles?

How much emphasis on the relationships between strategies and tactics of commanders and units?

How thorough is the coverage of every battle in the theatre(s)?

Technology /10

Does he explain the technologies that lead to the one in question?

Can they tell us the social factors behind the developments?

Are technical specifications consistent across models and types throughout?

Of course these are based on what I think a good book should do. It is hard for a single book to do this all. The Novice/ Expert marks will not be accumulated from the Editorial marks.

These are criteria-in-progress so please comment on what is missing - What does a good WWII book read like?

Comments

[Rod McLaren]

This looks very good Max.

I wonder if the corpus could be usefully expanded to novels - I'm just over halfway through Littell's controversial The Kindly Ones (honeymoon reading!) and feel like I'm learning a lot about how messy and rivalrous the interaction was within and between the party, the SS and the Wehrmacht bureaucracies (and perhaps a book is a better medium to describe that than a infographic!).

But pace Beevor's positive review in the Times I'm not sure how historically accurate Littell's being.

[Max Gadney]

Thanks Rod - two things there I think.

I agree that the rivalry between Hitler's agencies was an interesting story - possibly one better told in text. I reckon that with a good load of research into the spending and procurement practices one could draw a good correlation between their organisational, competitive disarray and the over-engineered, duplicative technologies that they put onto the battlefield.

Second, I may cover fiction - but my reading is mainly on the non-fiction side so I'm no sure when I'd have the time. But never say never.