The Second World War: A Complete History (1989)

Martin Gilbert's "The Second World War" (1989) is another fine, readable account, with a bit more emphasis on the decisions that drove the war rather than on the decision makers themselves. Mr. Gilbert manages the neat trick of telling the stories of the war on the Eastern Front, in North Africa and Italy and in the Pacific in a nearly simultaneous narrative. Time and again, he points out where Enigma decrypts and U.S. "Magic" breaks of the Japanese code gave the Allies an edge. And his meticulous notations of Nazi deportation and slaughter of Jews resonate through the story like tolling bells until just days before the fall of Berlin.