I love Erik Larson’s books Devil In the White City, Dead Wake, and In The Garden of Beasts. I always learn a LOT while enjoying the way his nonfiction reads like fiction. He’s one of my favorite authors, so I was particularly pleased to have a copy of The Splendid and the Vile from Crown Publlishing and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Subtitled A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz, this new book is nonfiction, but because of Larson’s skill, it is as hard to put down as the best fiction.  Clearly, we all know how the war would turn out, but reading about the earliest days of Churchill’s tenure as prime minister, the story is riveting. After France fell to Germany,  the U.S. was not yet in the war, so the British empire stood completely alone against Hitler.  In addition to presenting the facts that made my military historian fanatic husband ecstatic, Larson provides amazing detail about Churchill the man, with all his faults and eccentricities. It was an extraordinary time in history, and the early years of the war (prior to U.S. participation) could easily have resulted in a completely different outcome. Some of the reality doesn’t quite match the fantasy of the U.S. as military saviors portrayed so frequently in movies, which may ruffle the feathers of a few folks I can think of, but it’s an essential resource for anyone who is interested in either studying Churchill/WWII or reading a great story, extremely well written. Five stars.   My husband LOVED it, BTW.