![]() In an opening Note to Readers, Larson says the 9/11 attacks prompted the book: “It was only when I moved to Manhattan a few years ago that I came to understand, with sudden clarity, how different the experience of September 11, 2001, had been for New Yorkers than for those of us who watched the nightmare unfold at a distance. The figures are exploring and touching what remains. ![]() Two shelves are still standing in the debris. A striking frontispiece photo, the only one in the book, shows three lone figures amid destruction of what was once the Holland House Library in Kensington. You’ll zip through in admiration and suspense, marveling at Larson’s perspective on the months between May 1940 and May1941, when Germany confidently, violently and nonstop sent its sophisticated bombers and fighters to annihilate English cities and the countryside. Subtitled “A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz,” The Splendid and the Vile, over 500 pages, is worth every word. ![]() Erik Larson is so good a storyteller that as you read through The Splendid and the Vile, his magnificent saga of Winston Churchill during the bombing of Britain - “the year Churchill became Churchill,” as Larson says - you wonder how it will all turn out! The book is what’s been said of Larson’s earlier works: “addictively readable.” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |