The Winds of War (The Henry Family, #1) in Reading with Style

May 25, 2011 Wendy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-ii, doorstops, nazi-germany

It can be a struggle to read non-fiction books about complex historical events and truly assimilate the information without letting it go in one ear and out the other. Winds of War, a novel set in the years leading up to WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, filters history through one phenomenally connected US naval family. Somehow this slight fictionalization, the mere addition of a smaller human story to the gargantuan political one, provides the right amount of perspective to make this an in It can be a struggle to read non-fiction books about complex historical events and truly assimilate the information without letting it go in one ear and out the other. Winds of War, a novel set in the years leading up to WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, filters history through one phenomenally connected US naval family. Somehow this slight fictionalization, the mere addition of a smaller human story to the gargantuan political one, provides the right amount of perspective to make this an interesting (and educational) book about History. Because when you get down to it, that's what this is--an enormous, very much readable, chronology of the events leading to WWII.

The patriarch of the Henry clan is Victor "Pug" Henry, a senior naval officer who just wants to command a ship, but who finds himself sent off on various diplomatic assignments to Germany and Soviet Russia instead on President Roosevelt's every whim. This convenience of plot allows Pug to rub elbows with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and the like. Far fetched? Yes. Fascinating? Hell yeah. The other Henry clan members likewise find themselves spread far across the globe, because author Wouk wants to ensure that we readers get a front-row seat in as many (literal) Theaters of this War as possible. The eldest son becomes an aviator and is sent to Pearl Harbor to await the arrival of you-know-what. The younger "black sheep" son Byron opts out of the navy (for as long as he can) to study art in Italy, where he falls for a Jewish-American girl. On a visit to Warsaw to find her father's estranged family Byron finds himself in the midst of a German surprise attack on the city. You can guess where this story arc is headed too, I'm sure. Meanwhile, daughter Madeline gets a job with a New York radio biz, and Pug's wife Rhoda starts an elicit affair with a scientist who is (of course!) involved with the Manhattan project.

While all this human intrigue pulled me along through the first 500 pages of this 1000+ page book, I eventually began to resent the soap-operatic levels of drama that serve mainly to manipulate the characters into being exactly where the author needs them to be at a specific time in history. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into choreographing this hugely complex dance, but I could always tell that the strings were there. Byron's Jewish wife, of course, "needs" to stay in Europe to presumably bear witness to the horrors of the Holocaust in Wind's follow-up volume, War and Remembrance, and so she spends 800 pages of this book battling bureaucratic red tape and unlucky coincidences.

My favorite part of the book follows Pug's brief post as naval attache to the American embassy in 1930's Berlin. There are some great little moments as Pug witnesses the slow transformation of the city, from government officials to the lowliest of waiters, into weird, war-ready automatons. I suspect Wouk must have based much of this section on the real-life US ambassador Dodd, whom I read about concurrently in Erik Larsson's Garden of Beasts (though Pug is a much more interesting and sympathetic character, in my opinion). I also liked the occasional snippets of fictional German General von Roon, who provides the "official" German counter-explanations for their entry to WWII. However this book is so long that I eventually became impatient and eager for the end, and while I still plan to eventually read War & Remembrance, I need a long recovery first! ...more

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Aug 10, 2013 Kate S rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013

I struggled to stay interested in this story. I didn't really fall in love with any of the characters, so none of their stories engaged me. I did like the excerpts from the book by the German, translated by Victor. I thought it was a very interesting way to show the German perspective on the world during this unstable time. ...more

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