Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, this is more than just a history of the war - though it can be read as that too. Like John Keegan's HISTORY OF WARFARE, it goes behind the main events to explain the deeper causes of the war. What is really original is its iconoclastic view of the causes of Western victory. Overy explains the cultural, technical, military and psychological reasons for western dominance of the postwar world, while showing how close-run the race really was. It could have gone the other way.