The best books about early twentieth century history spanning thirty years from WW1 to WW2

I would recommend this book, because the protagonist in my novel is similar to the woman in the novel who inherits a business from her father, and the trouble she has to endure while running it from family and those who wish to destroy her. It was also made into a miniseries in the 1980s. It features four generations of the family for a period of almost a hundred years. The author Sidney Sheldon is one of my favorite authors and his books helped inspire me to become a writer, and to write family sagas with history as a background.

This novel by Jeffery Archer is about the hotel industry started by Polish immigrant Abel, his rivalry with Kane, who owns a bank, and how they try to destroy each other. It is similar to the characters in my novel, but in this case, the person trying to destroy the protagonist, who also owns a chain of hotels, is not known until she is almost kidnapped, which shocks everyone. Kane and Abel helped me understand the history of early twentieth-century America, and the struggles rich people went through during the Great Depression after losing everything due to the stock market crash of 1929. So anyone who is interested in early twentieth-century history will love this book.

Fans of the mafia will love this novel. It is about a Sicilian American family in the early part of the twentieth century and their confrontation with other mafia families. It also gives readers an idea of life in post World War II America and the importance of family loyalty. Even though there is a lot of violence and the characters get into illegal activities, the reader ends up feeling sorry for some of them. Mario Puzo writes in a way that transports you to Sicily, New York and gives you a mental picture of what the characters are like. It inspired me to introduce a mafia Don in my story who also gets himself and others into illegal activities with disastrous results during prohibition.

Although not a novel, but for Titanic fans or even other shipping disasters, it will give you minute by minute account of what passengers on the Titanic went through after colliding with an iceberg on that cold April night in 1912. It recounts the heroic deeds of many people who did their best to save themselves and others some even losing their lives in the process. This tragedy inspired me to put the Titanic disaster in my own book. It also inspired me to begin the novel with the Lusitania tragedy.

Lovers of World War 2 and the interwar years will like this book. It partly goes into life during Nazi-occupied France during WW2 and its aftermath. Although this book is about one woman’s revenge against her former lover, it gives the reader an idea of what life was like during the occupation. It helped me understand the problems people go through and who their real friends are when faced with adversity. Even though people may do wicked things to others or to those who have harmed them, their conscience gets the better of them when it comes to helping those who have shown them kindness. Their good side is revealed; so therefore, it is always good to find the saving grace rather than just the bad qualities in people.