Engineers of Victory

“Superbly written and carefully documented … indispensable reading for anyone who seeks to understand how and why the Allies won.”—The Christian Science Monitor   “An important contribution to our understanding of World War II … Like an engineer who pries open a pocket watch to reveal its inner mechanics, [Paul] Kennedy tells how little-known men and women at lower levels helped win the war.”—Michael Beschloss, The New York Times Book Review   “Histories of World War II tend to concentrate on the leaders and generals at the top who make the big strategic decisions and on the lowly grunts at the bottom… . [Engineers of Victory] seeks to fill this gap in the historiography of World War II and does so triumphantly… . This book is a fine tribute.”—The Wall Street Journal   “[Kennedy] colorfully and convincingly illustrates the ingenuity and persistence of a few men who made all the difference.”—The Washington Post   “Kennedy has produced a fresh perspective on the war, giving us not just another history of an overfamiliar conflict, but a manual of technical problem-solving, written in the clearest and most compelling style, that could still prove useful to modern management today.”—The Telegraph (UK)   “This superb book is Kennedy’s best.”—Foreign Affairs   “Paul Kennedy … has thus achieved a notable feat in bringing a large dose of common sense, historical insight and detailed knowledge to bear in his refreshing study of what might be called the material history of the second world war… . This material history of strategy asks the right questions, disposes of clichés and gives rich accounts of neglected topics.”—Financial Times“Paul Kennedy’s history of World War II is a demonstration not only of incisive analysis and mastery of subject, but of profound integrity, and a historian’s desire to celebrate not great leaders but the forgotten scientists, technicians, and logisticians who gave us the tactical edge, without which the strategic designs could never have been achieved.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography   “Kennedy’s fine-grained analysis and suspicion of any one single cause—like cipher cracking, intelligence and deception operations, or specific weapons systems, like the Soviet T-34 tank—permit him to persuasively array his supporting facts… . An absorbing new approach to a well-worked field.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   “A fresh and stimulating approach.”—Publishers Weekly

Paul Kennedy is internationally known for his writings and commentaries on global political, economic, and strategic issues. He earned his B.A. at Newcastle University and his doctorate at the University of Oxford. Since 1983, he has been the Dilworth Professor of History and director of international security studies at Yale University. He is on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals and writes for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and many foreign-language newspapers and magazines. Kennedy is the author and editor of nineteen books, including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which has been translated into more than twenty languages, followed by Preparing for the Twenty-first Century (1993), and The Parliament of Man (2006).