Retribution: Book summary and reviews of Retribution by Max Hastings

Media Reviews

"Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard." - Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph.

"A triumph . . . The key to the book's success lies not in its accessibility, nor in its vivid portraits of the key figures in the drama--although it has both--but in something else entirely: the author's supremely confident ambition." - Laurence Rees, The Sunday Times.

"Extraordinary . . . Anyone who believes that we're all living through a uniquely troubled time should read this . . . book." - Georgie Rose, The Sunday Herald.

"This is a book not only for military history buffs but for anyone who wants to understand what happened in half the world during one of the bloodiest periods of the blood-soaked 20th century." - The Spectator.

"Highly readable . . . An admirably balanced re-examination of the last phases of a conflict that it is not fashionable to remember." - Dan van der Vat, The Guardian.

"Engrossing . . . Its originality lies in the meticulousness of the author's research and the amazing witnesses he has found." - Murray Sayle, The Evening Standard.

"Hastings is . . . a master of the sort of detail that illuminates the human cost. It is the way he leaps so adeptly to and fro between the vast panorama and the tiny snapshot pictures that makes him such a readable historian."- Mail on Sunday.

"A fine-grained study of the last year of World War II in the Pacific ... A solid complement to existing histories of the Pacific theater." - Kirkus Reviews.

"It should be added to academic and public libraries as both the serious scholar and casual World War II history enthusiast will be interested." - Library Journal.

This information about Retribution was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Max Hastings Author Biography

Sir Max Hastings is an author, journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper. He is now a columnist for The Times of London and for Bloomberg and reviews regularly for the Sunday Times. He has published twenty-nine books, among the most recent of which are Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War (2018); The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-45 (2015); Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 (2013); All Hell Let Loose (2011); Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable (2010); Finest Years: Churchill As Warlord 1940-45 (2009); and Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45 (2004). He has also published three collections of writing about the British countryside and field sports. The son and grandson of writers, he was educated at ...

... Full Biography
Link to Max Hastings's Website

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