The best books that investigate the trials and tribulations of the generation that came before us

Suzanna Eibuszyc Author Of Memory is Our Home
By Suzanna Eibuszyc

Who am I?

Professor Elie Wiesel was instrumental in my translating and researching my mother’s journals. My awakening to the dark period in the chapter of the Jewish history happened between 1971-1974 at CCNY, when our paths crossed while I was taking his classes at the department of Jewish studies. It was in his classes that the things that bewildered me as a child growing up in communist Poland in the shadows of the Holocaust aftermath started to make sense. I asked my mother to commit to paper the painful memories, she buried deep inside her. She and the next generations have an obligation to bear witness, to be this history's keepers.

I wrote...

Memory is Our Home

By Suzanna Eibuszyc,

Book cover of Memory is Our Home

What is my book about?

Memory is Our Home is a thirty-year account that reveals the vibrant life of my family and of Eastern European, twentieth-century Jewish history and culture. The firsthand accounts link together Jewish life during the interwar years, Poland under the Nazi’s murderess grip, and the fate of Jews surviving throughout Russia and Uzbekistan during WWII.

My mother survived against all odds, and in the midst of all the tragedy, she even experienced love. What followed was a shocking repatriation home to Poland, to the “vast graveyard” and Jewish life under a new kind of oppression, communism. Interwoven with my mother’s journals are stories she told me throughout my life and my own recollections from life in the shadows of the Holocaust aftermath into the late 1960s.

The books I picked & why

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Ordinary Men

By Christopher R. Browning,

Book cover of Ordinary Men

Why this book?

The famous Hannah Arendt coined “the banality of evil." Not monsters, but ordinary people were able to follow Hitler’s murderess ideology. Ordinary Men clearly shows how men and women from all walks of life were capable of becoming cold-blooded killers. Ordinary Men were the Nazi mobile gas units and death squads responsible for the murder of 1.5 million Jews in Eastern Poland & Ukraine.   

Ordinary Men

By Christopher R. Browning,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Ordinary Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

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No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination, and the Making of Modern Israel

By Shimon Peres,

Book cover of No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination, and the Making of Modern Israel

Why this book?

When determination, vision, and the necessity to survive forced a small country, Israel, perform miracles. No matter the difficulties and challenges, from draining the swamps and turning the desert green, the vision for a better tomorrow, to be free and self-determined people made this country and her citizens rise above fear and embrace hope.     

No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination, and the Making of Modern Israel

By Shimon Peres,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Room for Small Dreams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1934, eleven-year-old Shimon Peres emigrated to the land of Israel from his native Poland, leaving behind an extended family who would later be murdered in the Holocaust. Few back then would have predicted that this young man would eventually become one of the towering figures of the twentieth century. Peres would indeed go on to serve the new state as prime minister, president, foreign minister, and the head of several other ministries. He was central to the establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces and the defense industry that would provide the young state with a robust deterrent power. He…

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The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz

By Jack Fairweather,

Book cover of The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz

Why this book?

Remembering the heroes, Witold Pilecki got himself arrested. After two and half years as a prisoner in Auschwitz, he escaped. He witnessed the brutality, the mass gassing of Europe’s Jews, thousands each day. He was among the first to set off the alarms that Auschwitz was the epicenter of the Nazis' plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews.        

The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz

By Jack Fairweather,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Volunteer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

COSTA BOOK AWARD WINNER: BOOK OF THE YEAR • #1 SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER

“Superbly written and breathtakingly researched, The Volunteer smuggles us into Auschwitz and shows us—as if watching a movie—the story of a Polish agent who infiltrated the infamous camp, organized a rebellion, and then snuck back out. ... Fairweather has dug up a story of incalculable value and delivered it to us in the most compelling prose I have read in a long time.” —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Tribe

The incredible true story of a Polish resistance fighter’s infiltration of Auschwitz to sabotage…

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Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

By Frank Dikötter,

Book cover of Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

Why this book?

This book is an excellent account of the disaster that the communist regime brought on its people. I grew up under communism and, together with my family, experienced a parallel disaster. Government controlled media, stores that were always empty, rationed medicine, and the daily trading for food on the illegal black market. The Communist Party Leaders had access to everything, and the people had nothing.

I see very clearly how life is so much different from the way I grew up and how my daughters were able to grow up in America. I feel very fortunate to have been able to come to this country after waiting in line for five years.    

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

By Frank Dikötter,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Mao's Great Famine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine: winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011 'A gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'A critical contribution to Chinese history' Wall Street Journal Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the West in less than fifteen years. It led to…

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The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

By David McCullough,

Book cover of The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

Why this book?

I came to America as a young teenager, and my interest in learning America’s history stayed with me till today. David McCullough is an amazing storyteller; using firsthand accounts, letters, and diaries, his books become powerful.

After a hazardous journey, Americans, politicians, architects, artists, doctors, and writers, traveled to the city of lights, Paris. They learn a new culture, achieve success, and return home to greatly alter American history. This, in a sense, is my story as well. I have always had that strong attitude of being grateful, of being able to exist in a free world.

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

By David McCullough,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Greater Journey as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Greater Journey focuses on the period between 1830 and 1900, when hundreds of Americans--many of them future household names like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, John Singer Sargent and Harriet Beecher Stowe--migrated to Paris. McCullough shows first how the City of Light affected each of them in turn, and how they later moved back to America to help shape American art, medicine, writing, science, and politics in profound ways.The Greater Journey is filled with wonderful descriptions of the old Paris before it was re-made by Haussmann's grand boulevards, and of the city's great places, especially the Louvre,…

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5 book lists we think you will like!

The best books about the Holocaust in Ukraine
The best World War 2 books that I used as research for my horror novel
The best books about the Holocaust and its aftermath
The best books about Chinese history that will surprise you
The best World War II books about people from Poland

Interested in agriculture, France, and the Holocaust?

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And, 3 books we think you will enjoy!

We think you will like A Time for Trumpets, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Band of Brothers if you like this list.

Book cover of A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge Book cover of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil Book cover of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest