CROWN The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

This is a well told story with some new aspects that I haven't seen before.This is a story that has been told many times, of the events to knock Great Britain out of WW II using air power - The Blitz as it has been described. I've read a good number of books on this topic as well as most of the major sources around Winston Churchill. I was pleased to see a new view of the historic events described from a different perspective with several story arcs tying the facts to what people were experiencing.The story mostly focuses on those close to Churchill with some additional material from diarists and minor embellishment to the facts around some of the many lives lost - much more interesting to get some minor feel for a person than to learn of their death as another number.I enjoyed finding that the title comes from paraphrasing a diarist's entry and it was fun to find it and remember reading their memoirs many years ago.It builds on works previously published, using first source material and keeping the major events in place while adding a new look at some of the more mundane aspects of life to deliver a story that shows the ordinary and extraordinary coexisting against the backdrop of war. The sources, bibliography and index were excellent.Despite the many story arcs presented, I had no problem keeping it straight over the intermittent reading of the story.A very satisfying read.

Another book on the Blitz etc? Yes but... very well researched and written. Has a different angle which immerses the reader in the events and how the central characters lived through it. I really enjoyed this book.

Well researched and documented, but reads like a novel. What an amazing man!!! One of the best history books I’ve read

I loved this book, as have so many readers - full of drama and detail. However, the publishers are useless - dreadul map and one pathetic illutration. This book is crying out for photographs and maps which could have been included without too much additional expense, and made a valuable addition to the details in the text..

Erik Larson is masterful at personalizing history and making the characters come to life without sacrificing accuracy and historical context. I have enjoyed everything of his that I have read including In the Garden of Beasts, The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake. The Splendid and the Vile is extraordinary in that it takes a very well-covered historical figure (Churchill) and offers a fresh and personal appreciation of what it was like, day to day, to be leading Britain in the early days of WW2. France is falling, England is unprepared and the US is isolationalist and not interested in another European war. But Churchill's leadership in uniting Britons and giving them hope and courage in the face of great peril are astonishing. All of which stands, of course, in such sharp relief to the unprincipled, selfish and divisive leadership we now observe so close to home.