There's a simple explanation for the result of WWII: the Allies marshaled more military power than the Axis. Although that is true, Professor Kennedy, the eminent author of many popular histories, would grade that explanation incomplete. He places a fuller interpretation on the chronological fulcrum of the global conflict: 1943. That's when Germany and Japan bestrode most of their conquered territories and seas, their armed forces battered but dangerous. For the Allies, someone had to devise applications of superior strength to numerous technical and strategic problems, and Kennedy elaborates five interlocking narratives of those individuals and what they did. Concerning amphibious landings, Kennedy elides prewar planners of such operations with wartime designers of landing craft; ditto with theoreticians and practitioners of air power, supremacy in which was critical for the success of any invasion from the sea. When Kennedy dwells on weapons like the Essex-class aircraft carrier, he treats them less as war-winning icons than as data for his ideas about running organizations, WWII being his case study. High authorial eminence ensures attention from the WWII readership.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kennedy takes a fresh and stimulating approach to the history of WWII in his latest, wherein he focuses on the war's middle years and its middle level: the implementation of strategies, doctrines, and policies as devised by Churchill and FDR in Casablanca in January 1943 and carried out into 1944. Before the North African conference, the Anglo-American alliance had not mounted decisive operations against the Axis powers. Five operational obstacles were in the way: "get[ting] convoys safely across the Atlantic," "win[ning] command of the air, "stop[ping] the Nazi blitzkrieg," securing and developing a European beachhead, and defeating Japan quickly and economically. In as many chapters, Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) demonstrates how, over the course of 18 months, the U.K. and the U.S. developed and implemented a system for addressing these problems pragmatically and focused on incremental progress. This process worked through a "culture of encouragement" based on "feedback loops" connecting all levels of planning and execution among the Allies, while allowing freedom to experiment, explore ideas, and cross institutional boundaries. Thus were intentions transformed to realities; thus was the tide of war turned. B&w photos, maps. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.