Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945
"Masterly. . . . Roberts's portrait of the relationship between the four men who made Allied strategy through the war years is a triumph of vivid description, telling anecdotes, and informed analysis." --Max Hastings, The New York Review of Books
An epic joint biography, Masters and Commanders explores the degree to which the course of the Second World War turned on the relationships and temperaments of four of the strongest personalities of the twentieth century: political masters Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the commanders of their armed forces, General Sir Alan Brooke and General George C. Marshall.
Each was exceptionally tough-willed and strong-minded, and each was certain that only he knew best how to win the war. Andrew Roberts, "Britain's finest contemporary military historian" (The Economist), traces the mutual suspicion and admiration, the rebuffs and the charm, the often-explosive disagreements and wary reconciliations, and he helps us to appreciate the motives and imperatives of these key leaders as they worked tirelessly in the monumental struggle to destroy Nazism.
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Andrew Roberts is a biographer and historian whose books include the New York Times bestsellers Churchill: Walking With Destinyand Napoleon: A Life (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Masters and Commanders, The Storm of Warand Salisbury: Victorian Titan(winner of the Wolfson Prize for History), among others. His most recent book, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III, was published in November 2021. Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, and a Trustee of the International Churchill Society. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
"With his usual brisk and vivid prose. . . . Mr. Roberts captures not only the personalities of World War II's masters and commanders but the dynamics of their relations." -- The Wall Street Journal
"Compelling. . . . In Masters and Commanders, British historian Andrew Roberts skillfully dissects the complex, contentious relationships among Brooke, Marshall and the other two key strategists of World War II's Western Alliance, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . . As Roberts makes clear throughout the book, hammering out Allied strategy was an untidy, exhausting, sometimes debilitating process, replete with fist-shaking arguments and emotional tantrums." -- Washington Post
"Fascinating. . . . By mining previously unavailable diaries and oral histories . . . this book brings vividly to life the personal interactions and impressions of those involved. Roberts has a keen eye for the telling anecdote." -- Mark Mazower, The Guardian
"Andrew Roberts, a tenacious archival historian and gifted writer, looks behind the façade of the familiar photographs and published accounts to see how these war leaders actually operated." -- Sir Martin Gilbert, The Evening Standard
"This is an important book which, in its layered references to Waterloo, the Crimea and the Somme, sees Mr. Roberts lay claim to the title of Britain's finest contemporary military historian." -- The Economist
"The strength of Masters and Commanders lies in the power of the narrative and the fascinating detail used to construct it. Roberts has exploited a rich mine of private papers to fill in missing parts of the story." -- Richard Overy, Literary Review
"Roberts's account of the war and its intrigues is fresh-filled with new revelations and new analysis. . . . It is both high scholarship and superb writing by a masterful analyst of power and war." -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Daily Beast
"Masterly. . . . A triumph of vivid description, telling anecdotes, and informed analysis. Roberts's book reinforces his claim to stand among the foremost British historians of the period." -- Max Hastings, The New York Review of Books
"Masters and Commanders is a magnificently researched, superbly written account of how the US and UK's top civilian and military leaders overcame mutual suspicions and conflicting priorities to win the war in Europe." -- The New York Post
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