MARK TURNER is staggered by a gifted jazz pianist from the Welsh Valleys
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Why the Red Army stopped outside Warsaw
WILL PODMORE welcomes, with reservations, a new history of Operation Bagration and the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang
SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective
New releases from Black Country, New Road, Anouar Brahem, and Jaywalkers
RICHARD CLARKE recommends a hugely valuable text for those seeking theoretical analysis and practical action to defend public services
JOHN HAWKINS is moved by an oral history that examines five black families pushed into homelessness in the US
BOB NEWLAND recommends an outstanding study of how images have shaped narratives of identity, resistance and power in South Africa
Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War
Jonathan Dimbleby
Viking, £25
IN this history of 1944’s battles on the Eastern Front, author and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby draws on the diaries, letters and reminiscences of soldiers on both sides, from generals to foot soldiers. His account rightly emphasises the decisive role the Red Army played in winning the second world war.
As Dimbleby asserts, Operation Bagration, fought from June 22 to August 19, was “the greatest single battlefield victory of the second world war. In operational scale and strategic significance … [it] was of more moment even than Operation Overlord, the overlapping Allied campaign in Normandy that began with the cross-Channel invasion on 6 June 1944.”
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WILL PODMORE listens keenly to the people’s voice expressing support for the USSR and disdain for the political Establishment and the empire
A look at the writing of war correspondent James Aldridge 40 years ago reminds us of the eastern perspective when a second front was finally opened on D-Day, 1944, says HELEN MERCER
Today marks 80 years since the dramatic events of D-day, a turning point in WWII. CHRIS MENON takes a look