The Winds of War
Follows the various members of the Henry family as they become involved in the events preceeding America's involvement in World War II. Like no other masterpiece of historical fiction, Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II is the great novel of America's Greatest Generation. Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events, as well as all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II, as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom. The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance stand as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
9mentions
7people
2022–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Loved “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk - middlebrow from the 70s but no less good for that.
Re-read “The Art of Not Being Governed” by James C Scott which is really mind-expanding stuff.
- If you really want to have a solid overview understanding of World War 2, and you are just not the type to read two long books no matter how good they are, then here is probably your best option by far:
1. Pay for an Audible account. (Or figure out how to get free access to audio books from your local library.)
2. Listen to the books “Winds of War” and then “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk.
The drama and characterizations are just fine, and will pull you right in to caring for Pug Henry and wanting to know what happens to him and his family.
The battle scenes are true history and will blow you away, and teach you a lot. Midway, incredible.
The coverage of the Holocaust will break your heart, but make you think, “wow, everybody in the world should read this once”.
The character evolution of Werner Beck, in light of today’s world events, might terrify you. Whole nations don’t all of the sudden become evil. Evil powerful leaders push evil down into a country over time.
- I recently read 'The Winds of War' and 'War and Remembrance', novels by WW2 US Navy officer Herman Wouk. It is amazing how much history he crams into the narrative, documenting, among many other things, German treatment of the Jews before and during WW2. His hope and the purpose of the books as expressed in the last sentences of 'War and Remembrance' is
'For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world’s worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civilians, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.'
Many attempts have been made to help us remember where humanity has gone wrong. I am prone to despair to see something so well documented being treated as a myth.
- "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" by Herman Wouk. Written in the 1970s, from the perspective of a Jewish-American family. He also earlier wrote Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Caine Mutiny" in 1951, it was a good book but not as enjoyable as the other two.
He fought in the Pacific Theater during WWII and so lived it.
(I also remember his 1948 "City Boy" being a hilarious tale of a Jewish kid growing up in NYC/The Bronx.)
- I, showing my lack of education, first learned of the conference from reading 'War and Remembrance', Herman Wouk. It's amazing how much legitimate history he crammed into it and its prequel, 'The Winds of War.'
- Winds of War was an entertaining read but wow -- depressing in a way that stuck with me for a long time. As intended, I'm sure. Wouk wrote some very dramatic scenes.
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