mostly a collection of unfamiliar information about the war, presented in some 300 briefs. Typical of the entries in these entertaining pages is a succinct account of the German ``counterfeit offensive,'' in which an attempt was made to flood Britain with fake pound notes; and a comparison between American and German armies at squad, battalion and division level. In the intriguing trivia section, one learns that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was related to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that participants in the battle for Guadalcanal included a 12-year-old American sailor. As to the dirty little secrets, here are a few examples: Australian stevedores deliberately obstructed the U.S. war effort at times; disease was responsible for nearly half the war deaths; Allied bombers caused far less damage to the enemy than is generally supposed. Dunnigan is the author of The Complete Wargames Handbook; Nofi wrote Napoleon at War. REVIEW https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780688122355

Absolutely awful. I made it through 188 pages before giving up. I'd not even stick it in my bathroom. The introduction pretty much sums it up with:

"This is not a history of World War II , but revelations about many of the lesser-known details. Because it is a book of facts, you don't read it from beginning to end, but rather you jump in wherever it srikes your fancy."

This book is badly written and heavily biased towards the US. For instance the chapter entitled 'The Road to War' includes events all the way up to December 1941...clearly a lot of the rest of the world had been at war for a couple of years prior to this. Rather this chapter should be entitled 'The Road to the American Involvement in War'.

If the author had employed a decent editor, then a lot of the facts presented in this book would have been far more interesting and better presented than page long tables of numbers or rambling snippets of information that have no structure.

Unfortunately my fancy was not struck for very long. I was expecting a book on secret weapon manufacture or delving into mind control techniques or clandestine operations. It seems to me that the reason 'no one told you' about the little secrets in this book is that they would have dropped dead from boredom or astonishment at the overinflated opinion the author has of Americans.

Anyway, enough said, I would not recommend this book. ( )

Lots of information. Format is good for quick reads when opportunities arise.

I would group information presented into three categories (: with comments)...

Review of concepts not often presented elsewhere: This category makes the book worth reading. Topics vary from a half page to several pages. Interesting discussion of strategies, weapons reviews and comparison of combatant countries using all sorts of data.

Commonly known information: Most of this category I already knew from other resources. Presentation of the information was not distracting and for the most part compliments other presented information (above).

Trivial facts: Much of this information presented in several sentence tidbits was almost distracting. Not sure it significantly contributed to the book's primary content. Not sure why they would be considered as "dirty little secrets". Better left out. Maybe group them in a separate trivia chapter.

The book is common sense organized by major areas of the war (by time period and theatre).

Dunnigan's background is wargaming which (to me) is the practice of quantifying all aspects of warfare into numbers for comparison. The authors do spend a fair amount of time boiling down topics to analysis of numbers. Often there are reviews made of figures not often considered.

One of the more interesting topics reviewed several times is: How do you quantify good and poor leadership? Tough to measure. Maybe there is not a realistic measure. However, presentation and analysis of related information contributes to the book's content.

I like books that include a wealth of organized information (whether statistical, trivial, graphics/spatial or a combination). Dunnigan's book makes for interesting reading. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11764297