The second World War was really two wars, or perhaps even several - the war in the West, and the one fought in the Pacific between America and Japan. England also fought, in Burma and elsewhere, virtually self-contained local wars to defend her empire, parts of which were naive enough to welcome the Japanese as liberators. One could even say that the Eastern Front was virtually a self-contained campaign on its own, since it pitted Germany against Russia in a theatre where the Allies scarcely counted. John Keegan keeps a grip on overall strategy, but does not avoid the great set-pieces - such as the Battle of Midway, fought between aircraft carriers often hundreds of miles from one another and in which a single squadron of American planes suddenly turned the tide of battle inside a quarter of an hour. Unlike some previous English historians, he is not contemptuous of the American High Command and in fact respects Eisenhower's strategic sense if not his grasp of tactics. Montgomery is shown both in his strong points and his failings, while Alexander is implicitly blamed for his rather limp handling of the later fighting in Italy. The Warsaw Uprising, too, is slightly demythologised - its real purpose was to seize the city before the Russians arrived, a decision which misfired tragically. To this formidable study can be added Alanbrooke by David Fraser (Harper Collins, £9.99 in UK), a sympathetic but slightly overlong portrait of the Northern Irish CIGS during the crucial war years, who had as much strain coping with Churchill as he had with the Germans.