Your Book Review: How the War Was Won

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

To a first approximation, there are a million books about World War II. Why should you care about How the War Was Won (hereinafter “HtWWW”) by Phillips Payson O’Brien?

• It provides a new, transformative view of the conflict by focusing on production of key goods and what affected that production instead of the ups and downs of battles at the front.

• That particular lens used can (and should) be applied outside of just World War II, and you can get a feel for how that might be done by reading HtWWW.

• I have lectured about World War II and read many, many books about it. I have never texted friends more excerpts of a book than this one.

I have some criticisms of HtWWW, but if the criticisms dissuade you from reading the book, I will have failed. These complaints are like tut-tutting Einstein’s penmanship.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-how-the-war-was