"Every page glows with the excitement of discovery . wonderful."--Geoff Dyer, The Guardian Drawing on Len Deighton's deep understanding of ordinary soldiers and the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders who sent them into battle, Blood, Tears, and Folly is a sweeping and unflinching history of the darkest days of the Second World War. Rooted in the personal accounts of the soldiers themselves and ranging across six theaters--from the Battle of the Atlantic and the Blitzkrieg of Western Europe to North Africa, the Luftwaffe's air war, the invasion of Russia, and the chain of events that led to Pearl Harbor--Deighton brings a novelist's compassion and a historian's precision to his analysis of the first truly global conflict. The result is military history as it should be written: clear-eyed, technically sophisticated, and deeply human.