REVIEW: A Slender Thread by John Rhodes

1942: At the Siege of Malta, one of the most crucial battles in modern history, only extraordinary courage and willpower can turn looming defeat into victory.

The war in the Mediterranean, 1942: The outcome of World War II hangs, as Churchill says, by “a slender thread.” Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s “Desert Fox,” is poised to defeat the reeling British army in Egypt and thwart America’s first operation in Europe. Only the tiny, embattled, half-starved Mediterranean island of Malta stands in Rommel’s...