Frank E. Manuel: Scenes from the end: the last days of World War II

Profile Books $49.95

Review: Gilbert Wong

Manuel was an American intelligence officer stationed at the heart of Germany in late 1944 and 1945. His account of the chaos as the Second World War ground to a untidy halt is not history but reportage of the highest order. There's death and suffering, but also snatches of conversation, quotes from GIs and the people whose countries they occupied. "Love and food. Sex and hunger. Occupation is a primitive business," he writes. He interviews a German officer who explains that Dachau was the work of "another department." There is the constant need by victors and vanquished to explain the unexplainable. Manuel writes like a dream about a nightmare.