Unless you're one of the time-traveling historians invented by novelist Connie Willis. You can read about it, but you can't go there. Reams of history have been written about the events of those days, but the past really is another country.

Murrow brought the war into America's homes with nightly radio broadcasts during the battle of Britain and the London Blitz. We're just at the entrance of an air raid shelter here and I must move this cable over here just a bit so people can walk in.įleming: Long before America entered World War II, Edward R. A searchlight just burst into action off in the distance, one single beam sweeping the sky above me now. I'm standing here just on the steps of St. The noise you hear at the moment is the sound of the air raid sirens. Murrow begins another historic broadcast. It's day 46 of the battle of Britain, and in the center of London, a young American correspondent named Edward R. Air raid sirens wail as Luftwaffe bombers approach the city. Together, Blackout and All Clear constitute a seamless, deeply moving masterpiece that will be read-and remembered-for many years to come.Jim Fleming: It's August 24th, 1940. The result is a work of great ingenuity and bottomless humanity that uses chaos theory, meticulous research, and a dizzying array of temporal paradoxes to reconstruct a vanished era, illuminating that era through the varied perspectives of the soldiers, sailors, shop girls, and ambulance drivers who struggled through it. Their increasingly desperate attempts to return “home” to the year 2060 form the core of a narrative that ranges freely, and with great authority, across time and space, from the evacuation of Dunkirk to the ultimate triumph of V-E Day-and beyond. Three time-traveling scholars, each investigating a different aspect of World War II, are stranded together in London during the height of the Blitz. The story begins in the immediate aftermath of Blackout. Like its predecessor, Blackout, it is both a brilliantly constructed work of science fiction and a masterful recreation of a pivotal moment in 20th century history.

PotterĪll Clear is the magisterial conclusion to Connie Willis’s epic, two-volume account of love, war, and time travel.

Connie willis blackout all clear