The Winds of War

By: Herman Wouk

Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau

Length: 45 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

A masterpiece of historical fiction, this is the Great Novel of America's "Greatest Generation".

Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with The Winds of War and continues in War and Remembrance, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.

Also listen to War and Remembrance.

©1971 Herman Wouk (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Wouk's real genius lies not just in the narrative power of his books, but in his empathy with the people and the times of which he writes…. The genius of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance is that they not only tell the story of the Holocaust, but tell it within the context of World War II, without which there is no understanding it." ( The Washington Post)

well done

great listen period in world history .
compact story that tells of a more personal side of some people's live at the began of wwll

War & Peace lite, but still enlightening

As much as I love historical fiction, I didn't think any author short of Tolstoy could make battle strategy interesting to me, but Wouk did. My test of good historical fiction is being "driven" to fact check a detail then being able to jump right back into the world of the story, and not wanting to leave. This book beat a satisfying path to my reference shelf.

I expected only a pot-boiler with a traditional Yankee bias, but the novel exceeded that, both in style and content.

Narrator Parriseau does a good job, but with such a range of voices and characters there are some misses.

Compelling

I imagined an audio book of this length would be torture to listen to, but once I "picked it up", I found myself stealing time away from other activities to listen. I miss Pug Henry's voice already and look forward to the sequel.

Great history - flat characters - ok narration

I am a big fan of historical fiction. I love learning about historical events through the eyes of ordinary people who live through them. Such stories are able, when told ably, to reflect the complexity of a situation in a way that often eludes historical non-fiction, which is usually concerned only with the chain of events, and seeks to fit them into neat explanations.

Wouk is a remarkably perceptive and nuanced writer where politics, war, and strategy are concerned. The Winds of War is full of fascinating observations about the view of history and mission of each of the combatants. The book covers the interval between just before the German invasion of Poland (Sept 1939) up until the entry of the USA into the war following the Japanese attach on Pearl Harbor (Dec 1941).

The protagonist, Victor "Pug" Henry is a naval officer who serves as attache in Berlin beginning in 1939. Thanks to a tip from a German naval officer with whom he makes a friendly acquaintance, he is able to predict the Hitler-Stalin pact at a time when few if any in the US could conceive of it. This draws the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, who comes to rely on Pug Henry's to help be his eyes and ears overseas. Henry travels to England, where he has occasion to meet with Churchill, and is present for the first German bombing of England. He also serves as an informal emissary of the President in Italy, where he meets Mussolini, and in Russia, where he meets Stalin. Of course he meets Hitler in Germany on a couple of occasions, and has the opportunity to have a private meeting with him and Goering to discuss receiving another emissary of the President.

Through these experiences and through the lives of his family members who are scattered about the globe, the reader sees the war and the American experience of it through many eyes, from many perspectives. including those of the leaders of each of the combatants. One of Henry's sons marries a Jewish woman, Natalie, who does not really register her own peril as a Jew in Europe until remarkably late in the game, and whose uncle, a scholar living in Italy, is similarly myopic about his situation. This subplot is intriguing, if infuriating. Time and again Natalie heads into the heart of conflict, apparently taking for granted that her privilege will see her through, and oblivious to her recklessness.

We see how opposed to entering the war the American public was, right up until it was attacked, despite tales of atrocities in Europe, and how until that point Roosevelt had to finesse his support for Britain in the face of a hostile Congress that wanted to remain neutral. We see the careless, normative antisemitism throughout European and American society. Intriguingly, we read the fictional memoirs of a fictional German general, Armin von Roon, writing from prison after the war, about the strategy of the war from the German military perspective. He describes the beliefs of the German people, why they were so connected to Hitler and willing to follow him, and how they rationalized their atrocities as no more nor less dramatic nor objectionable than what the Americans did to its indigenous population, nor what the British did in India. These were just the things that a powerful people did to the less powerful when they wanted to grow in power and land. And von Roon also treats at length what he attributes to be Roosevelt's brilliance and ruthlessness in preparing for an outcome that would leave America the great world power and would leave Britain as its subordinate in the aftermath of the conflict.

Of course all of these points are things that we can read in drier histories. But when woven together and seen in "real time" from the perspective of people who do not know the future as they live through an unimaginable present, the result is a richer and deeper understanding not only of that time, but a new perspective on our own.

All this then makes Winds of War well worth the listen. It is perhaps asking too much of an author who covers so much ground, then, to also be able to imbue his characters with the same level of complexity and nuance with which he treats politics and strategy. The characters are, by and large, simple and uni-dimensional. They can be summarized in a sentence or two and never really transform as characters. The drama of the story comes not from the interplay of characters, but rather from the events of this most dramatic period of history. This can be forgiven I suppose, though, since what we get in return is so rich in terms of that history.

In general, then, I found the book well worth the time. The one thing that made it irritating over time was the narrator's performance of female characters. His voicing of them makes them always seem flighty and emphatic, very "Oh my!" all the time. Part of this is the writing, but the cartoonish treatment of all the women over time got on my nerves, to the point that I bought the Kindle version of the book and read through many of the sections in which women were the central characters because I just couldn't take listening to the caricatured voicing of them. This was in contrast to the voicing of the male characters, which was, by and large, pretty good, and especially good in the case of the prominent characters of history, particularly Roosevelt and Churchill.

Excellent

The Winds of War and War and Remembrance are truly literary masterpieces. The epic story can be considered as a drama and romance overlaid with a World War II story, or as a World War II story overlaid with drama and romance as both descriptions fit. It can also be dually thought of as a cross between fiction and non-fiction since the fictional story contains tremendous historical detail. And, in the case of the audio edition, the narration is superb.

Spectacular Historical Fiction

This book is simply extraordinary -- on so many counts.

1) The narrator is phenomenal. One of the best at his craft that I've ever heard. Worthy of being mentioned in the same group as Ed Hermann and George Guidall.

2) The historical part of this is quite educational. The author apparently went to great lengths to research actual history. Many times while reading it, I went to Wikipedia to research some topic or another that the author mentions in the book that I'd never heard of before.

3) The story is quite engaging, The people are interesting -- and Wouk is obviously an excellent story-teller.

I'm VERY much looking forward both to reading other books written by Herman Wouk and listening to other books narrated by Kevin Pariseau.

Very well read

Loved the different and consistent voices
Great story, I couldn't and still don't know how to tell which part was real and which was fiction

A Masterpiece of History

Victor “Pug” Henry is a naval officer between wars who serves as a kind of wise but unwitting guide through three pivotal years leading up to Pearl Harbor. I read the book when it first came out, more than 45 years ago. It was and remains an epic in every sense of the word. An electric sense of adventure, drama, history—this book’s got it all.

The characters are rich and three-dimensional, including Pug’s fascinating, far-flung family, and others like the acting US charge d'affaires in Warsaw, Leslie Sloat, who is brilliant, a Rhodes Scholar and skilled diplomat—and whose weakness is that he is a coward.

The interstitial chapters, purporting to be Pug Henry’s translations of a book by the (fictional) German general Armin von Roon, are surprisingly revealing of multilayered motives behind the scenes in Germany, adding unexpected depth and perspective.

“The victors write the history, pass the judgments, and hang or shoot the losers,” von Roon writes. “Wars are inevitable. There will always be wars. And the one war crime is to lose.”

Pug happens to meet the leading cast of WWII: FDR, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini. He’s present at great moments in history, such as a dinner with FDR when the president receives word that the RAF has sunk the Bismarck.

Narrator Kevin Pariseau delivers a heroic performance, and may have earned him the mantle of the late Edward Herrmann. He does a passable Churchill, and a pitch-perfect Roosevelt, along with a cast of dozens more.

Wouk’s prose and Pariseau’s narration have together convinced me to proceed to the even-longer “War and Remembrance.”

Wouk at his best

This is in my opinion, Herman wouk's best work. It has managed to stand up to audio transcription far better than it did to film. I can not praise kevin Pariseau enough. Well done.

The best introdu tion to WWII

The best way to understand the causes and people of WWII from both sides of the war