Customer Reviews:
 The National Reviews So Far October 12, 2008
Andrew Roberts (LOndon, UK)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Reviews of Masters and Commanders
`Writing with clarity and elegance, Mr Roberts conveys how his four principals and their armies of aides and staff officers thrashed out the formulae for victory. This is an important book which, in its layered references to Waterloo, the Crimea and the Somme, sees Mr Roberts lay claim to the title of Britain's finest contemporary military historian.'
The Economist
`Despite eschewing the visceral drama of the battlefield for the less deadly, if no less hard-fought, debates of various Allied conferences, cabinets and committees, Roberts has produced a surprisingly gripping read. He has marshalled his material superbly and his warts-and-all assessment of his four subjects is invariable spot-on. Exhaustively researched and judiciously written, with a gimlet eye for telling detail, this may be his finest book yet.'
Saul David, Sunday Telegraph
`In Masters and Commanders, Roberts offers us a compelling analysis of American and British strategy during the war. He also tells a profoundly human story - of two soldiers who loyally served their masters, only to be each denied at the end the prize that would have made one of them world famous.'
Laurence Rees, Sunday Times
`Roberts displays a profound understanding of the interactions between strategy and politics, and his interpretation of British/US strategic relations between 1941 and 1945 is unlikely to be superseded.'
Prof Vernon Bogdanor, Financial Times
`Couched in elegant prose, this book is a masterpiece of robust historical analysis, steeped in scholarship and alive to every nuance of personality. Roberts re-evaluates each of the masters and commanders with scrupulous fairness.'
Christopher Silvester, Daily Express
`The author has crafted a masterly and fresh interpretation of the grand strategy of World War II. Roberts's pen-portraits, with their wealth of amusing and often acerbic anecdotes, reveal the evolution of that strategy by the master statesmen.'
John Crossland, Daily Mail
`The strength of Masters and Commanders lies in the power of the narrative and the fascinating detail used to construct it. Roberts has exploited a rich mine of private papers to fill in missing parts of the story, and although there is little new to be learned about the long strategic arguments between the British and the Americans over the best way to defeat Hitler, there is a lot to learn about the way that argument took place. Roberts has a shrewd grasp of the ins and outs of decision making.'
Prof Richard Overy, Literary Review
`Marshal Foch famously said that he had "less respect for Napoleon, now that I know what a coalition is". The high quality of the leadership of the coalition Andrew Roberts so expertly describes was a decisive factor in their success.'
Conrad Black, Mail on Sunday
`A wonderful page-turner, a really good read.'
Chris Patten, Start the Week
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