The Winds of War (A book review)

I have read the novel ‘The Winds of War’ written by Herman Wouk.  This is the story of the Henry family right at the beginning of World War II.  It is a historical novel that makes the reader feel like they are actually part of that world.  This is a novel that is about how the Henry family faces all types of family diversity that comes from living as a military family and the issues that occur while in service to country.

‘The Winds of War’ is a descriptive novel that will make the reader as mentioned before a part of the plot and the settings of America and Europe at the end of 1930’s and early 1940’s.  This is a time of change for all who lives at this time and how they deal with the uncertainty of what is happening.  America is  preparing for war without preparing for a world war in using politics to solve issues.  Families are beginning to accept change for daughters wanting to work at what they wanted to do and the sons going into the service of their country to protect the family in any way they could. There are plenty of ups and downs in this book for one page lead to another page to see what happens and how the story turns out for the family

The ‘Winds of War’ is a novel that secondary English and Social studies could use in their classes when studying the time period that book covers.  The English teacher can teach about the emotions of the time period and how the genre lets the author describe how the settings and characters affect the story.  The Social studies teacher could teach the facts of the time period and how at this time the world was changing politically, economically, socially, religiously as well as educationally.  This is a novel that will make learning about the period before World War II more enjoyable and entertaining than just learning the facts of, for example the Lend-Lease Act between the US and England.  This is one of the historical events that is a big part of this novel

More to come when the sequel is covered in the next article.