War and Remembrance (The Winds of War, 2)

I've always wondered why this book was so popular, along with its predecessor "The Winds of War". I tend to avoid huge books in excess of 1000 pages, because I've been disappointed in the past by time-wasting tomes.

For that reason, I avoided reading Herman Wouk's epics. Talk about judging a book by its cover, or in this case by its weight... But I finally did start reading these books, and was completely hooked from the first chapter of "The Winds of War". I couldn't wait to see what happened in "War and Remembrance".

I can't imagine following Wouk's suggestion that one can enjoy "War and Remembrance" on its own, without having first read "The Winds of War". Start with the first one. If you don't, you won't know what you're missing later. The characters in the saga are developed in "The Winds of War" such that it breaks your heart when they encounter all of their perils and difficulties in the second book. I've never felt such sadness about the fates of fictional characters the way I did in "War and Remembrance", but I also was exhilarated by their successes and shreds of happiness along the way.

The two minor criticisms I have with "War and Remembrance" in no way detract from the five-star rating I'm giving it. First: The book felt a bit rushed at the end. Even though most of the dangling plot threads were tied up neatly (as neatly as war allows), there were too few pages dedicated to some of the most jaw-droppingly significant events of the entire war, specifically having to do with Japan. And that leads me to criticism number two: The war in the Pacific got comparatively short shrift, as compared to Europe. I would have appreciated it if Wouk would have expounded more on Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Doolittle's raids, etc. The cast of characters would have had to be dramatically expanded to do this, and Wouk probably would have had to write a three-volume set instead of two. (I'm going to read Wouk's classic "The Caine Mutiny" next...that should satisfy my craving here.)

His treatment of the Nazi-fueled cancer in Europe was as gut-wrenching and historically complete as anyone could ask for. The story's been told many times, but it must still be told many more times as history marches on and people forget. The atrocities of the Third Reich are fully documented here, in all their filthy excesses, and it's horrible to see the characters you care about getting drawn into that maelstrom. Sadder still to realize that you're grieving about fictional characters, when so many million _actual_ people were slaughtered in this hell on earth.

Wouk writes from his background...his family emigrated here from Russia, and in the USA Wouk really explored and expounded upon his Jewish roots. Even though he wasn't in the Holocaust, he certainly did his homework. This is an important book for everyone, just for this reason alone: The man's a master storyteller.

Rare is it that you find a book - let alone two! - where you feel educated first and then entertained. "War and Remembrance", along with "The Winds of War", are stories I'll remember for the rest of my life. Shattering, epic, dramatic, and I'm quite confident I'll never encounter such great works again.

I am not Jewish, but I loudly add my voice to the chorus: "Never Again!"

I've noticed that there continues to be an interest in these books, but that there have also been some interesting comments about them on Amazon. So I'll add some thoughts of mine.

These novels, which are really one, extended, story cover World War II from antecedents to conclusion from the American viewpoint. Wouk uses the device of having one set of characters--in this case Naval Officer "Pug" Henry and his family--continually turn up in key situations so as to allow the novel to cover the entire epoch while having a continuous, human-level plot. ("War and Peace", obviously an inspiration to Wouk, is probably the most famous example of this approach.) Without this device the writer is forced to chose between taking a microscopic view of the period, or ending up with a set of connected stories without a unifying, human-level plot, or interrupting the novel with historical asides. The downside of this device is that it relies on a series of improbable events and coincidences to get a key character into each historical situation important to the story. Readers then need to suspend disbelief on this point to enjoy the novel; those that can't are going to be disappointed.

Comments on Amazon suggest that these books are anything from soap operas to the greatest historical novels ever written. Those who consider them soap operas can't suspend disbelief concerning the plot improbabilities. That is a fair reason to not enjoy novels like these, but doesn't really consign them to the level of soap opera. But neither are they among the greatest historical novels ever written. In fact, they aren't even the best novels about World War II that use this plot device; that honor goes to Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate", which covers the war from the Soviet viewpoint, and is a great novel by a great writer and well worth reading.

At the end of the day, Herman Wouk may be remembered as one of the finest American novelists of the twentieth century, in that his best books were outstanding, if conventional, novels. But he was not a great writer, although he was a very good one. That said, these are two books that deserve to endure and gain new generations of readers. They are well written, keep moving and encourage the reader to keep turning pages, and give a grand overview of the World War II era. If you love history you might prefer learning about the era from nonfiction books by historians and participants. If you are looking for deep characterizations and profound insight into the human experience you should probably read smaller-scale novels that look inward rather than cover the broad sweep of a world-wide conflict. But for a reader looking for a well constructed and well written story that also provides an overview of the conflict that consumed the world in the 1930s and 40s, and set the stage for the geopolitics of the half century to follow, these are wonderful books.

It's easy to point to the flaws of this book -- the strained devices used to tell the tale of something as massive as WWII through one Navy family, the clunky dialogue, the breathlessly trashy romances. But there is real literary merit in this work. By the time Wouk wrote this book, we as a culture had increasingly come to see the Holocaust not as some backwater theater of the war, but as, in many ways, the central experience of the conflict. Wouk writes movingly and at times brilliantly about this experience. The chapters about two concentration camps, including the horror of Auschwitz, are the best in the book.

Also remarkable is Wouk's ability to capture the sense of denial the Nazi's exploited to engineer the Holocaust. Western observers, reacting to the false British propaganda horror stories of WWI and, more importantly, acting on a latent sense of anti-semitism, denied the growing evidence of the horror. Western leaders were reluctant politically to make the Jewish issue a central issue in the War. The Jews hoped against hope to survive, and the Nazis deliberately encouraged just enough hope to make the whole horror work.

Wouk is very effective at portraying the difference of the peace time and war time military -- and how many of the skills rewarded in the peace time military are not of much use, and are even counterproductive, in war time. Also, Wouk moves away from the rah-rah, America's-the-greatest, good-war jingoism that characterizes much of contemporary treatments of WWII. The morality of American submarine tactics are explored compellingly -- though, as U.S. Grant once said, war is about killing, and the necessity and effectiveness of the submarine war probably must be conceded. In one great passage at the end of the book, one captain is berated by a Holocaust survivor about going to meet with captured German vets to pump them for information. "They are muderers", the survivor says. "So am I," says the American.

I admire Wouk for his ambition, passion, and sensitivity -- and can look beyond all his flaws.

I have recently reread War and Remembrance and its predecessor The Winds of War after a lapse of many years. I am confident in saying that neither volume has lost any of its vigor, and that they remain the epitome of the historical novel.

War and Remembrance begins immediately after Pearl Harbor and continues through the war years to September, 1945, The chief protagonist is Victor "Pug' Henry, a US Navy officer who has a Zadig-like ability to be present at practically every historical event during the war years. If Pug wasn't there, then members of his family, including his wife Rhoda, children Warren, Byron, and Madeline, and a host of friends and associates were. The research is impeccable and the writing is clear and vivid.

As is to be expected from a war novel, there are many harrowing moments in War and Remembrance, especially in those chapters which cover the Holocaust experiences of Byron's wife Natalie and her uncle Aaron Jastrow. But those harrowing moments are precisely why War and Remembrance deserves to be read and reread, to remind us that these horrible events happened.

As with its predecessor, War and Remembrance is the epitome of the historical novel.

You're in for a long haul but it's well worth it. I take on at least one epic every winter and picked "Winds of War" and it's sequel "War and Remembrance" this year. I love historical fiction and these two books are some of the best. You'll learn about WWII and still be able to wrap yourself around the characters whose family soon becomes a part of your life. There's intrigue & suspense, there's action & very personal relationships as well and then there are the facts of WWII that will have you looking online for more information. These are powerful novels that really draw you in; so much so that after I read "Winds of War" I was going to take a break and read something else between it and "War and Remembrance" but as I read the "other" book I kept wondering about what happens to these characters Wouk created. So I quit the "break" book and got right back on "War and Remembrance." I'm very glad I did. Both novels are such page turners that it's darn near impossible not to want more. The two combined are close to two thousand pages but they read like a novel of several hundred. Good stuff!