The year opened with the Axis powers inflicting a series of disasters on the newly formed Allies: Pearl Harbor, followed by Japan's conquest of the Philippines and Southeast Asia; Rommel running unchecked in North Africa; devastating defeats of the Red Army at Kharkov, Crimea, and southern Russia. By the summer of 1942, many of these theatres offered a grim global calculus. Any notion of decisive victory seemed far-fetched.

Yet by the end of 1942 there had been a sea-change. Within just one forty-day timespan, the British had triumphed over Rommel at Alamein; British and American forces landed in North Africa to confront the Axis position there; the Americans won two naval battles at Guadalcanal, sealing the fate of that campaign and with it Japanese expansionism; the Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive at Stalingrad that would condemn six Axis armies to eventual destruction. The Allies had somehow gained the upper hand, forcing the Axis powers into a defensive crouch from which they would not rebound.

Jonathan Parshall's epic 1942: Crux of War offers a sweeping new narrative. It looks at the year from all sides and from every front, revealing how military reform, economic mobilization, inspired improvisation, and growing professionalism coalesced quickly and decisively, paving the way toward final Allied victory.