The Battle of El Alamein (the second one) is the most famous battle of the Desert War in World War II. The confrontation between Rommel and his Panzerarmee and Montgomery and his Eighth Army became almost a legend.

In "Alamein", Jon Latimer makes a detailed description of the Battle of El Alamein, also narrating most of the war at the desert, from the time Italians declared war to the Allies, which ultimately forced the Germans to send troops to Africa too, to the Second Battle of El Alamein and its consequences.

The summary above sounds good and, after reading the book, I don't regret buying it, but I have some objections about it:

The descriptions of every little detail of the Battle are really profuse and, although that should be a good thing, sometimes you get a little confused (some more maps would be helpful) or even bored. The book's first chapters are quite good, but the narration is less fluent when it begins the El Alamein part, when the author tries to detail every movement of troops.

Another main drawback is that Latimer writes about the events mostly from the point of view of the Allies, there are a lot of more quotes, anecdotes, descriptions of the conversations between the commanders and pages about the battles and troop movements from the Allies' perspective than from the Axis'.

"Alamein" is not a bad book, if you want to learn about the desert front of WWII it's not a bad start, but it doesn't offer a complete perspective of the events from both sides.

my rating: