Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

Winner of the Pritzker Prize for Military History

A New York Times Notable Book

From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.

For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire conflict. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people-of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad-Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.

Max Hastings is the author of more than twenty books. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain's Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. He has received numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988. He lives outside London.