Books: Readable History

THE SECOND WORLD WAR: VOL. V, CLOSING THE RING (749 pp.)—Winston Churchill—Houghton Mifflin ($6).

Winston Churchill likes to work in bed, but it is sometimes hard to believe that he ever sleeps in one. Mentally, at least, he seems to have spent every minute of World War II on his toes. In Closing the Ring (Vol. V of The Second World War, at least one more volume to come), there is the same insatiable appetite for knowing the whole score every minute that gives the continuing snap of excitement to the entire work. Subordinates with less than Churchillian lust for living hard...