"Boys fight the wars. We'd have the brotherhood of man tomorrow if the politicians had to get out and fight." Herman Wouk (925)Herman Wouk continues the saga of American Admiral Victor “Pug” Henry and his naval family during World War II in “War and Remembrance,” a sequel to The Winds of War. The narrative starts with the ruins of the Pacific Fleet at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. American aircraft carriers on maneuvers escaped, and Wouk tells the story of how the allies, through brave families like the Henrys, clawed their way to victory. (I review this book thirty years after I last read it, and assign the rating I would have given it at the time.) Pug has two sons: Warren, a naval aviator on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise; and Byron, an executive officer aboard the submarine USS Devilfish. Pug commands the surface cruiser USS Northampton. (Surface ships, though not without function, are going the way of the dinosaur, and though Pug sees action, his sons encounter more danger in this new type of naval warfare.) Through Warren, we experience the crucial Battle of Midway where outnumbered American naval aviators, with incredible luck and precise timing, out-duel the Imperial Japanese Navy. Byron’s submarine sinks Japanese tonnage and dodges depth charges and dragnets.Beloved characters die heroic deaths, and I remember bitterly weeping as a boy when I read those passages. The darkest part of the story is the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of the Jastrow family (into which Byron Henry is married). The Jewish story is told through Aaron Jastrow’s fictional memoir, “A Jew’s Journey,” which is periodically intermingled with the rest of Wouk’s narrative, and it attempts to look at how some Jews fought for their lives and others bravely accepted the inevitable.Fictional characters intermingle with real ones as Wouk gives a panoramic yet personal view of the war. Fictional characters mingle with Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Admirals Halsey, Spruance, and Nimitz. Once again, we get the German perspective through the fictional memoirs of German General Armin Von Roon, who gives us commentary on global strategy, which Wouk inserts every 50 to 100 pages.War disrupts the marriage of all three of the Henry men. Wouk served in the United States Navy during World War II, and I suspect he developed a very low opinion of womens’ fidelity to their men who were in harm’s way. Critics once classified this type of book as “middlebrow fiction.” It is more challenging than today’s standard mystery or thriller, though it does not arise to being a literary novel. This is a giant historical epic, but unlike Michener, who starts with geology and moves to the present while introducing hundreds of characters over thousands of years, Wouk has a hundred moving pieces all within only a four-year period. "War and Remembrance" exhibits an intricate plot and good storytelling. Though I have moved on and would not rate this book as highly as I once did (because I have changed), I wish people would find a place for books like this which have been discarded for the "lowbrow." This was one of my favorite books when I was 16, and I read it twice, along with Winds of War, a combined 2,500 pages. I also have strong personal memories that I associate with this book. If you read my review of Winds of Warhttp://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...you will know that my French teacher Madame Broyles encouraged me to read this series. Although she moved, I had the good fortune, through the generosity of others, to travel as part of a summer program with her in Europe. I remember traveling around Europe with her and my 1,300-page mass market paperback of War and Remembrance. I also remember that we were in London at the time of the Falkland Islands War between Britain and Argentina. As I read about the Pacific Naval battles, I was also reading the newspaper about the sinking of the General Belgrano and the HMS Sheffield as well as the Battle for Stanley. So, today, I pull down my tattered and well-traveled copy of this book, the cover completely torn off, and remember the summer of 1982, Madame Broyles, and the Falklands. November 29, 2012
The world watched while the destruction that was Hitler ravaged Europe and was joined by the imperialist aims of Japan to rule the Pacific and beyond. Herman Wouk in this one book captures the essence of this time period giving us a comprehensive view of the full story beginning with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. We see American's brave young men in air, sea and submarine battles, diplomacy at the highest levels, the urgency of the Jewish situation throughout Europe, etc. all though the eyes of the Henrys from Pug and Rhoda to their children, their friends, their professional acquaintances and their adversaries. We even see the German viewpoint through the writings of a fictional German general.This will definitely draw you back in time and place and you will feel as if you know the characters and are living through these hard times with them. I generally have a hard and fast rule not to glimpse ahead in a book to see what has and/or will happen, but in this one I had to look ahead to make sure that a certain character was still around at the end, because I saw no way for her to survive. That shows how much I was invested in the book and in the characters. While fictional in nature, the facts and details of the world situation at this time give the reader a history refresher as well. From U.S. relations with the Soviets in Moscow to Americans caught by the war with Italy in Siena, from the eye-witness accounts of the horrors of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to the written account of actual battles at sea in the Pacific, from accounts of illegal boats smuggling Jewish refugees into Palestine to the creation of the atomic bomb at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, this book gives an all-inclusive story of WWII. If you are a WWII buff, this is a must read.
What do You think about War And Remembrance (2002)?
Like its predecessor, The Winds of War, this book is a must read. A great book overall and the two book series is highly interesting. My only negative criticism concerns the amount of time spent during the middle of the book, which covers late 1942 and early 1943. Probably too much detail. Then, there is not a whole lot of time devoted to the last 14 months of the war -- as if Herman Wouk wanted to rush the ending. I would have balanced it out a little more. This criticism is a tale wagging the dog, though. The book is lengthy, but it would be a disservice not to afford coverage to the entirety of the war. In other words, I am not bothered by the length. 6 stars.
—Jeff
This wasn't supposed to be my Holocaust spring. Who needs such a thing? But Bloodlands was on hold for months and months; I finally got it. War and Remembrance was on my cousin's bookshelf, an old mass-market paperback, 1400 pages of pure pulp that I'd promised to read if an easy opportunity arose. By the end my head was filled with battleships and cattle-cars and the sheer brutality of the 20th century; it left me feeling edgy and tearful.Herman Wouk is an interesting writer, mixing history, reportage, and character-driven narrative into a frothy, "as it happened" account of WWII. He was a better writer in The Caine Mutiny, certainly; wartime service aboard a naval ship in the Pacific gave his observations a primary reliability rarely achieved in W&R or The Winds of War, and nothing in these latter books impacted me as much as CM's astonishing conclusions on the requirements of service and the nature of command.Still, the "War" books have several things going for them. First, they are immensely readable and, where length becomes a burden, skimmable. Secondly, Wouk wrote them late, in the 1970s, and touches upon the dichotomies of American hegemony (Cold War, the middle east, genocide) which came to dominate the second half of the 20th century. As a Jew looking at America, as an American looking at the world, and as a writer looking into himself, Wouk lays out a vast array of material to ponder, and does a wonderful job of getting out of the way.Now I must have a Jane Austen chaser.
—Daniel
This review covers both books in this story of World War II, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Together they follow the experience and growth of Victor Henry, a U.S. Navy Officer, his family, and the many people they meet (American and otherwise) in the great events of that global conflict. As with all great novels, these books are not meant merely to entertain, but to teach and communicate something of the human condition. Here, the auther attempts to reveal the depth of human goodness and evil; to document the human ability to strive, to suffer, to hurt, and to love; and to show the final virtue in individual goodness. I sometimes feel like placid, comfortable lives tend to obscure humanity: there is no need for greatness and no opportunity. This is also dealt with in the story, for though the events of this story take place during a world war, a relatively small part of the book takes place during actual combat. All in all, this is a masterful work, equally attractive to those who enjoy romance and those who enjoy battle. In my mind it stands with War and Peace as one of the greatest novels of all time.
—Matthew Klobucher
