About this ebook
“[A] decided tour de force... Stoler provides an excellent and readable overview on a global scale of the interrelated wartime military, strategic, and diplomatic decisions and contributions of the United States and Great Britain... Stoler’s forte is elegantly concise syntheses of massive outpourings of scholarship in both military and diplomatic history and judicious, balanced, and stimulating assessments of often controversial issues... Lucid, balanced, nuanced, and acute, giving equal space to the wars in both Europe and Asia, Stoler’s interpretive overview is a valuable and welcome addition to its field.” — The Journal of Military History
“This is the work of a mature historian, comfortably in command of his material, using his considerable experience to construct a tightly controlled narrative that carries the reader forward with little effort on his or her part; a sure sign of considerable effort on the part of the writer... Stoler’s book is much more than the synthesis it might appear to be... It is a masterly summary of existing scholarship, but one enriched by his own knowledge of the archival and secondary material... this book shines when it comes to grand strategy; the reader wanting a potted (and accurate) evolution of Anglo-American grand strategy will find all he or she will need here.” — The International History Review
“Mark Stoler... is supremely well qualified to undertake this volume... Previous studies of Anglo-American relations during the Second World War tend to focus on either the war in Europe or the war in the Pacific. The originality of Stoler’s approach is that he wants to cover both. He seeks as well to incorporate the results of relatively recent publications on the Second World War... The results are impressive... Stoler’s writing is a major strength of this book... Stoler provides admirable surveys of the major historical controversies of the Anglo-American war against the Axis powers, such as the efficacy of the Allied strategic bombing campaign, the utility of the Italian campaign, and the continuing debate over the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anyone who teaches courses on the history of the Second World War will find this volume a valuable resource.” — The Journal of Modern History
“Allies in War is... a solid survey of the war... [an] effective synthesis of the most troublesome aspects of the special [Britain-US] relationship.” — Naval History Magazine
“An important new study by one of the leading scholars in the field.” — David Reynolds, University of Cambridge
About the author
Born in New York City in 1945, Mark A. Stoler earned his BA at the City College of New York in 1966 and his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971. He joined the University of Vermont (UVM) faculty in 1970 and became Professor Emeritus in 2007.
Stoler’s areas of special expertise are US diplomatic and military history and World War II. Included among his many publications are Allies and Adversaries: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and US Strategy in World War II (2000) which won the Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History in 2002, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941-1943 (1977), George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (1989), and Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers, 1940-1945 (2005). He also co-authored Explorations in American History (1987) with Marshall True, Major Problems in the History of World War II (2003) with Melanie Gustafson, and Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies (2005) with Justus Doenecke.
Stoler’s scholarship earned him the University Scholar Award at UVM (1993) and his equally distinguished teaching earned him the Dean’s Lecture Award (1992), the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award (1984), and the Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award (2006). In addition to teaching at UVM, Stoler has served as a visiting professor at the US Military Academy at West Point, the US Naval War College, the University of Haifa in Israel, the US Military History Institute, Williams College, and Washington & Lee University. He has also produced two audio/DVD courses for The Teaching Company and served as editor of volumes 6 and 7 of The Papers of George Catlett Marshall (2013 and 2016). Most recently he co-edited with Molly Michelmore The United States in World War II: A Documentary History (2018). He is former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (2004) and a former trustee of the Society for Military History.
