War and Remembrance is the yet more epic (nearly 1400 pages) sequel to The Winds of War. It covers the period from shortly after Pearl Harbor in 1942 to the end of the war in 1945, again through the experiences of the members of the Henry family. I enjoyed The Winds of War quite a bit, but this one I thought moved too slowly and read much more as a history book than as historical fiction. There were many stretches when Wouk stopped telling the story altogether and simply described various events of the war, and he made far too much use of his device of Pug Henry's translation of a German officer's account of the war. There were, of course, many interesting events involving the characters, but they took much too long to play out and I found myself losing interest in what would happen to people.

Wouk did a good job of bringing to life the horror of the Jewish concentration camps. And I got a little better idea of how the seemingly infallible German fighting machine somehow faltered, though it all seemed to come down to Hitler's egomaniacal micromanagement catching up with him, which is a little bit of a dissatisfying explanation. I still found Pug Henry and Pamela Tudsbury's characters interesting, but I was disappointed that the formerly strong and independent Natalie Jastrow became a typical fearful and cautious woman the moment she gave birth to a child. Still, I did learn quite a bit more about the war than I managed to pick up in high-school history, I just wish I could have enjoyed the read more.

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