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Title: The War

Subtitle: An Intimate History: 1941-1945

Author: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns

Narrator: Ken Burns, Tom Hanks, Josh Lucas, Rebecca Holtz

Format: Abridged

Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-06-07

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 98 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The individuals featured in this audiobook are not historians or scholars. They are ordinary men and women who experienced - and helped to win - the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost.

Focusing on the citizens of four towns - Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Mobile, Alabama - The War follows more than 40 people from 1941 to 1945. Woven largely from their memories, the compelling, unflinching narrative unfolds month by bloody month, with the outcome always in doubt. The iconic events are here, but we also move among prisoners of war, defense workers, and schoolchildren, and families who struggled simply to stay together.

An intimate, profoundly affecting chronicle of the war that shaped our world, The War captures the American experience of World War II through the words and deeds, thoughts and feelings of those who made history on the battlefields and on the home front.

Members Reviews:

Good book, poor audiobook

I looked forward to this book because 1) of the quality of Ken Burns' work on past topics of American History and 2) I feel WWII, more than any other conflict the United States was a part of, tells us how we came to be what we are as a nation and what we became afterwards. The narrative did not disappoint. It was well written and frank, breaking many of the myths that we learned in school about how we just rose up and saved the world after we were attacked by Imperial Japan in 1941. I listened to the book before I saw the PBS series and you can see the close relationship between the two.

So, why only three stars? Well, one star was removed simply because this is an abridged version and it doesn't appear that an unabridged version exists. Call me rigid, but NO abridged version can substitute for reading the authors' full intent. Abridgment means compromise.

The second star was removed because, frankly, although Ken Burns may produce extraordinary documentaries, he is a TERRIBLE reader. Rather than reading in phrases and pausing after a thought is complete, he pauses after every two or three words, whether it makes sense to do so or not: "The boy (pause) went to (pause) the store." The entire reading is riddled with this kind of phraseology and it becomes annoying after awhile because it often forces you to go back and repeat what he has said in order make sense of it. Ugh!

A must listen!

Without reservations, I recommend this book to all the citizens of this great nation. I sincerely believe that after completing this book you will have a new respect for the sacrifices our soldiers and their families made during the World War II.

A Must Listen

This is one very good companion piece to the PBS documentary. Ken Burns (the film's co-director and this audiobook's primary narrator) is not an actor, and neither were any of the people whose words and stories he tells here. His narration is direct and quietly impassioned, which makes it all the more forceful.

Burns and co-director/producer Lynn Novick let it be known from the beginning that this story would not be about "..the traditional top-down heroes we are usually presented with - the generals, the presidents and statesmen, the prime ministers and field marshals who tend to recede from our understanding just as they ascend to the pantheon of Great Men.