The reader needs to be aware of two important things about The Storm of War. First, it is written from the British perspective and as such has a British point of view and focus. Readers expecting accounts of American campaigns will be disappointed. Second, it primarily focuses on the European war with only small accounts of the war in the Pacific.
As for the organization of the book, it deals with large portions of time in each chapter. All in all it is a good one volume history of the British Empire in the Second World War. ( )

Primarily a military history of all of the different fronts of the Second World War. I found the statistics hard going at times, but I see how they're an important part of the story.

Near the end, you get the standard defense of the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (many more lives would have been lost had the bombs not been used). This is obviously controversial.

You also get a catalog of all of Hitler's mistakes with the conclusion that Hitler's military thinking would have been so much better if only he hadn't been a Nazi!

I appreciate the British point of view of the author, and my understanding of what went on in the world from 1939 to 1945 is greatly improved. ( )

For a single volume history of WWII, I really didn't think it was very well done or contained new information. It focuses nearly exclusively on the European conflict and doesn't deal much at all with the causes of the war. I much prefer [b:A Short History of World War II|8915|A Short History of World War II|James L. Stokesbury|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165766705s/8915.jpg|11818] by [a:James L. Stokesbury|5798|James L. Stokesbury|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] when it comes to single volume histories of WWII. Stokesbury spends much more time discussing the causes of the war, which is more interesting to me, as well as at least trying to cover some of the subtopics (resistance movements, Allied conferences) and deals with both the European and Pacific theaters. Roberts also used quite a bit of terms and jargon in non-English languages, which became annoying after a while. While there were a few good nuggets in this book, I can't say I recommend it. ( )

I found this book slow, meticulous, detailed, and much more thorough than I expected or was prepared for. I think it would be hard to present so much information in a way that is any more exciting, but I still wouldn't recommend this to anybody who isn't already very well versed with the specifics. ( )

Good read but very little "new" material. That said, Roberts is a very entertaining writer. ( )