DeScribe

I totally agree with what Calibre said about starting big books right before semester, because I'm spending too much time reading the fantastic Armageddon, and not enough wallowing in post-colonial theory.

Max Hastings is a military historian and Armageddon details the last year of the Second World War, as the Third Reich collapsed under the weight of maintaining two fronts. That's going to leave a lot of you cold, but I think there's something mythological about WW2 - it's structured very much like a fantasy novel (don't laugh at me here, I'm reaching). The good guys are beaten almost to the point of surrender, regroup, and fight a glorious victory against a despicable enemy.

Except, as Hastings points out, it wasn't as clean-cut as that. All sides routinely shot prisoners and murdered civilians, and dithering by the Allies on the Western Front allowed Stalin's hordes to rape and massacre their way from East Prussia to Berlin. There's some shocking stuff in here. Hastings is a superb writer, and keeps you glued to the pages by constantly 'zeroing in' from vast strategy to individual accounts.

If you watched Saving Private Ryan, you should read this book. I think it's at the Glen Waverley library (I got my copy shipped from www.bookfinder.com).