Lukacs is a familiar name in World War II studies. These two volumes, released in 1990 and 1976, respectively, follow the key players on the other side of the Atlantic. The duelists in the first title are Churchill and Hitler, and this book covers the pivotal 80-day period in 1940 when the Germans were poised to crush British forces and invade the empire. The second volume offers a precise time line of events and describes both what happened and why. Lukacs concentrates not only on the historical but on the sociological aspects of the war. For all collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The dates in the subtitle mark two critical moments of the now epical summer of 1940: the appointment of Churchill as British prime minister and Hitler's order to his generals to prepare an attack on the Soviet Union for the spring of 1941. Lukacs ably narrates the train of events within the interval, but the distinctive feature of his writing is a tight weaving of social and psychological insight into the well-known story. He recounts the weight each leader gave to his possible alternatives as they faced off across the English Channel, after the stunningly fast fall of France. Churchill's strategic problems were extraordinarily complex, whereas Hitler faced an essentially more simple task of choosing between inducing Britain to concede defeat, and failing that, invading either Britain or the Soviet Union. The tools the author uses, such as spotlighting an obscure but significant fact (for example, he suggests that a Norwegian colonel get partial credit for bringing Churchill to power) and re-creating the mood of each leader's entourage, helps him to achieve to a remarkable degree what historians are trained to do, to show that what actually happened is only one of many possible outcomes. A fascinating interpretation, fit for most public libraries. Bibliography; to be indexed. ~--Gilbert Taylor

This study concentrates on Churchill's and Hitler's perceptions of each other during an early crucial period of WW II, from the German invasion of Western Europe to the time, 80 days later, when the fuhrer decided to attack Russia rather than risk a cross-Channel invasion of England. Lukacs describes how the German dictator tried to force the British into a compromise peace, explains why Hitler declined to destroy the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk and reveals in detail how Churchill succeeded in keeping up the fighting morale of Britain as it stood alone after the fall of France. In this masterful double-portrait Hitler is presented as a ``revolutionary'' and Churchill as a ``reactionary,'' the incarnation of the resistance of the old world to ``a force that was frighteningly efficient, brutal, and new.'' The author leaves no doubt that Churchill had a much greater understanding of his adversary than did Hitler. The third great character in the study is Franklin Roosevelt. Lukacs ( The Last European War ) analyzes the influence of the powerful isolationist bloc in the U.S. and distills the factors that led FDR to defy it, bypass Congress and order the transfer of 50 destroyers to Britain--the first formal American departure from neutrality. The book is a significant contribution to our understanding of WW II. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved