The Bitter Sea

the long version

"A gripping history of the Mediterranean campaigns from the first rumblings of conflict through the Second World War and into the uneasy peace of the late 1940s. In the 1930s the British commanded the Mediterranean as the world's great thoroughfare, from Gibraltar in the west to the Suez Canal in the east. To the Americans, it represented the answer to anti-imperialism and to Mussolini it encapsulated his violent vision of conquest of "Mare Nostrum". In the ensuing war that raged, the blue waters of the Mediterranean and the surrounding nations witnessed an epic and brutal conflict between enemies and allies alike."--Global Books in Print.