A fine spring and a beautiful evening on May 10, 1940, didn’t seem the type of day that would portend a sequence of events that would define our world to this day. Yet, on Winston Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and that succeeding year, May 1940 to May 1941, saw the death of 45,000 Britains through a blistering series of bombings amounting risks that Germany would occupy and rule all of Europe, and the emergence of Churchill as a man that would define for all time true leadership. Erik Larson again brings his extraordinary talent in making history relevant and riveting to his latest book, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz.
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