The Winds of War

The Winds of War

Herman Wouk

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The Winds of War is Herman Wouk's second book about World War II, the first being The Caine Mutiny (1951). Published in 1971, it was followed up seven years later by War and Remembrance; originally conceived as one volume, Wouk decided to break it in two when he realized it took nearly 1000 pages just to get to the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1983, it became a highly successful miniseries on the ABC television network.

The Winds of War Foreword

The Winds of War is fiction, and all the characters and adventures involving the Henry family are imaginary. But the history of the war in this romance is offered as accurate; the tics, as reliable; the ivards and acts of the great personages, as either historical, or derived from accounts of their words and deeds in similar situations. No work of this scope can be free of error, but readers will discern, it is hoped, an arduous effort to give a true and full picture of a great world battle.

World Empire Lost, the military treatise by "Ar?run von Roon," is of course an invention from start to finish. Still, General von Roon's book is offered as a professional German view of theother side of the hill, reliable within the limits peculiar to that self-justifying military literature. Industrialized armed force, the curse that now presses so heavily and so ominously on us all, came to full power in the Second World War. The effort to free ourselves of it begins with the effort to understand how it came to haunt us, and how it was that men of good will gave-and still give-their lives to it. The theme and aim of The Winds of War can be found in a few words by the French Jew, Julien B: Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing.

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The Scars She Hid From The World

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The heavy iron gates of the Wilderness Correction Camp groaned as they released me after three years of state-sponsored hell. I stood on the dirt road, clutching a plastic bag that held my entire life, waiting for the family that claimed they sent me there for "rehab." My brother, Brady, picked me up in a luxury SUV only to throw me out onto a deserted highway in the middle of a brewing storm. He told me I was a "public relations nightmare" and that the rain might finally wash the "stink" of the camp off me. He drove away, leaving me to limp miles through the mud on a snapped ankle. When I finally dragged myself to our family estate, my mother didn't offer a hug; she gasped in horror because my muddy clothes were ruining her Italian marble. They didn't give me my old room back. Instead, they banished me to a moldy gardener’s shack and hired a "babysitter" to make sure I didn't embarrass them further. My sister, Kaleigh, stood there in white cashmere, pretending to cry while clinging to her fiancé, Ambrose—the man who had once been mine. They all treated me like a volatile junkie, refusing to acknowledge that Kaleigh was the one who planted the drugs in my bag three years ago. They wanted to believe I was broken so they wouldn't have to feel guilty about the "wellness retreat" that was actually a torture chamber. I sat in the dark of that shed, feeling the cooling gel on the cigarette burns that covered my arms, and realized they had made a fatal mistake. They thought they had erased me, but I had returned with a roadmap of scars and a hidden satellite phone. At dinner, I didn't beg for their love. I simply rolled up my sleeves and showed them the price of their silence. As the wine spilled and the lies crumbled, I sent a single text to the only person I trusted: "I'm in. Let them simmer." The hunt was finally on.

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