Books: African Armada

OPERATIONS IN NORTH AFRICAN WATERS, OCTOBER 1942-JUNE 1943 (297 pp.) —Samuel Eliot Momon—Little, Brown ($5).

More words were written and read about World War II than any other war in history. But much of the writing came from correspondents who were usually in a hurry, and often able to observe only one closeup section of a big scene. And the official writings were usually cramped by the dictates of security and the censors.

In the past year there have been beginnings of an attempt to put together the war as it really was—its grand strategies,...