As I may have mentioned, I’m team-teaching a course on WW II in lit and film, with a historian who chose Keegan’s book THE SECOND WORLD WAR as the primary historical text. It’s a little too technical and tactical for my own tastes, but it’s his call. One of my complaints is about the maps, which are black and white, with arrows (in various shades of gray) distinguishing Russian troop movements from German naval defenses, etc.–in other words everything looks the same to me.
Is there a good (preferably online) source of excellent, full-color maps on WW II anywhere? I prefer online because of the portability problem, but if need be, I’ll just get my hands on some book and refer to that. I love maps, but I need to be able to read them, and b & w maps of complex events just doesn’t cut it for me.
The Atlas of World War II is excellent. As you can see, Amazon is selling it for $34.95. However, I frequently see remainder copies in big chain book stores.
The Times Atlas of the Second World War, edited by Keegan, is excellent, though it’s neither online nor particularly portable. Its maps are good and comprehensive, even if denoting the US/British forces in some shade of greyish blue and the Germans in a pinkish red seems somehow round the wrong way. While this doesn’t sound a factor that you’re worried about, the text is also sufficiently thorough that the book is my usual first port of call in looking up WWII time-and-place stuff, despite my having plenty of more specialist works on the conflict to hand.
It’s been reprinted several times, usually under other imprints, so the most available or cheapest version may not have the Times branding.