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Max Hastings Two-Book Collection: All Hell Let Loose and Catastrophe
A two-book collection of Max Hastings’ bestselling works about the 20th century’s most terrible global conflicts.
‘ Europe Goes to War 1914’: In this centenary year, Hastings’ thrilling and also deeply moving account seeks to explain both how Europe plunged into what was then called ‘The Great War’, what befell the millions of people of many nations caught up in the first months on the battlefield and as civilian victims.
‘All Hell Let The World at War 1939-1945’: This is ‘everyman’s story’ of 1939-45 from a host of viewpoints across the world- British fighter pilots and Russians tanker crew, Chinese peasants and French housewives, American naval gunners and Italian partisans. Here, with an extraordinary blend of top-down and bottom-up testimony is Hastings’s acclaimed answer to the question ‘what was World War II like?’
‘ Europe Goes to War 1914’: In this centenary year, Hastings’ thrilling and also deeply moving account seeks to explain both how Europe plunged into what was then called ‘The Great War’, what befell the millions of people of many nations caught up in the first months on the battlefield and as civilian victims.
‘All Hell Let The World at War 1939-1945’: This is ‘everyman’s story’ of 1939-45 from a host of viewpoints across the world- British fighter pilots and Russians tanker crew, Chinese peasants and French housewives, American naval gunners and Italian partisans. Here, with an extraordinary blend of top-down and bottom-up testimony is Hastings’s acclaimed answer to the question ‘what was World War II like?’
- GenresHistory
2132 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 8, 2014
29 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
Max Hastings
112 books1,709 followersSir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 16, 2021
Compulsive reading
These two books by Sir Max Hastings are hard to put down. As always he includes copious views of the combatants and civilians in the war zones. The research behind them is quite staggering and my knowledge, particularly about the First World War (Catastrophe), is greatly enhanced. They bring home the brutality of war like no other books I have read. Perhaps they should be compulsory reading in all our secondary schools.
My only criticism is that Catastrophe only really covers 1914 in any detail and perhaps more could have been written about the remainder of the conflict with less emphasis on the first months of the war.
However a must read for all those with an interest in both World Wars.
These two books by Sir Max Hastings are hard to put down. As always he includes copious views of the combatants and civilians in the war zones. The research behind them is quite staggering and my knowledge, particularly about the First World War (Catastrophe), is greatly enhanced. They bring home the brutality of war like no other books I have read. Perhaps they should be compulsory reading in all our secondary schools.
My only criticism is that Catastrophe only really covers 1914 in any detail and perhaps more could have been written about the remainder of the conflict with less emphasis on the first months of the war.
However a must read for all those with an interest in both World Wars.
January 6, 2019
Andy's review
Downloaded these two books because they were a very good price and I have read other books by this author. I really enjoyed both of them, & learnt quite a lot of new faces from 1914.
Downloaded these two books because they were a very good price and I have read other books by this author. I really enjoyed both of them, & learnt quite a lot of new faces from 1914.
February 13, 2018
Most broadly thorough and engaging book I have read on the subject.
March 20, 2019
Tour de force
Read
February 26, 2022timely
August 20, 2015
A fantastically written book but a bit heavy going for me so I didn't finish it. I'll probably go back to it at some stage for another go.
September 30, 2017
Both are exceptional histories in their own right. With that said CATASTROPHE was the more entertaining of the two books. Both are well researched and annotated. Highly recommended for reading.
October 27, 2018
I just finished the book, and, while it drags at times with personal anecdotes, as opposed to detailing the battles, it's a good refresher with good updates on the research done on the the greatest war in history.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews