Narrative history isn’t about dates, kings, and queens. It’s about deeds, actions, experiences, decisions of people great and small. It’s about putting the reader in the middle of a drama and watching events unfold around them as if they were there so they can understand, observe, and perhaps ask: what would I have done? The best history writing shouldn’t just inform, but inspire you, make you feel: laugh, cry, feel angry, flinch at horrific sights, cheer the heroes, boo the villains, because history is made by ordinary people, good and bad, who possess many similar traits to the reader.
Hitler’s Final Fortress is the story of the battle of Breslau—today Wrocław in Poland—at the end of World War 2, a siege that lasted as long as Stalingrad but is little known in the West. It is told through the eyes of the city’s residents, the scratch German units who sought to defend it, the Nazi leaders who reduced it to rubble, the Red Army troops who sought to capture it. By the time Breslau surrendered on May 6, 1945—four days after Berlin had fallen—the city was a wasteland and 25,000 soldiers and civilians had died.
Hitler's Final Fortress is the first full-length account of the siege in English, based on official documents, newspapers, letters, diaries, and personal testimonies.
Isaac’s Storm brings the hurricane which hit Galveston, Texas, in September brilliantly to life, revolving around the central figure of the city’s official weatherman, Isaac Cline.
I’ve read the book half a dozen times—it reads like a novel, its descriptions are vivid, horrific, haunting. The tension rises like the waters—it’s as close to being at the eye of a hurricane without… well you get the picture. Gripping from the first page to the last.
From the bestselling author of The Devil in the White City, here is the true story of the deadliest hurricane in history.
National Bestseller
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline…
Other, newer books on the Battle of Berlin are available. And Ryan’s other books, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, are more famous. But The Last Battle is the book whose style and mood I most try to emulate in my own writings.
Ryan interviewed many of the participants, collected reams of documents from both sides—at a time when the Cold War was at its height—and the result is a wonderful book. You can smell the cigarette and gunsmoke, picture the military and political leaders talking, laugh or cry at some of the vignettes.
Beevor’s book on Berlin is better history—thanks to the sources he was able to access—but Ryan is my ‘go-to’ book if I want to feel and experience the fall of Berlin.
The Battle for Berlin was the final struggle of World War II in the European theatre, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and brought an end to the Nazi regime. It lasted more than two weeks across April -- May 1945, and was one of the bloodiest and most pivotal episodes of the war, one which would play a part in determining the shape of international politics for decades to come.
THE LAST BATTLE is a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of…
If you want one book to understand how the first month or so of World War 1 played out, there is only one place to turn. Tuchman’s book is beautifully written, with a rich tapestry of characters and events, it covers the major events in Europe in August and early September 1914. It is largely seen through the eyes of ‘great men’—the military and political leaders of the day—which makes it slightly dated by today’s standards, but the skill and humanity of the reader and the sheer scope of the narrative will keep you in their thrall.
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step…
This is similar to my first recommendation in its theme: a tremendous natural disaster overwhelming a small community (in this case a volcano and a Caribbean island). It moves at the pace of a novel … as does the lava when it starts flowing… building up to the terrible, climactic conclusion. I’ve read it three or four times and it never loses its power. Once you start reading, you can’t put it down. Don’t watch the terrible Paul Newman film which is loosely based on the book though!
I’m an Eastern Front buff—especially the beginning of the war and its end. And this is the very best book on the first six or so months of the titanic clash between Hitler and Stalin. Robert Kershaw is one of the best (largely) WW2 historians because he gives the ordinary soldier a voice. There are other books that go into greater detail on specific actions, and it is more German than Russian focused, but for an overview from Leningrad to the Crimea, with the emphasis on the Moscow axis, it’s the best general read by some distance.
I have been writing all my life, but was never able to find my voice until I had my daughters. It was for them I wrote “Wrightsville Beach”. I wanted to show them what a good relationship should look like and how their decisions make a difference in where they will go. I want my readers to relive that feeling of falling in love and to be sent in unexpected directions, as life so often does to us. I want you to enjoy it so much, you don’t want to put the book down until it’s finished and once you do, to sit and reflect on it, savoring the feeling it has left behind.
Two years ago, devastated by the sudden death of his older brother, Hank Atwater went on a drinking rampage that ended in his being arrested. Since then, he has been working to rebuild his reputation in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, with little luck. But everything changes after a chance meeting with Jess Wade, a UNCW student studying to be a marine biologist. Hank and Jess feel connected to each other in a way neither has ever felt before.
But when Hank’s past leads to a frightful incident, it ends their relationship. Jess leaves to work on the beach with sea turtles, thinking about what really happened that summer with Hank, while Hank sets out to find his own path in hopes of one day winning her back.
Two years ago, Hank Atwater made a terrible mistake. Devastated by the sudden death of his older brother, Rob, he went on a drinking rampage that ended in his being arrested for aggravated assault. Sober since then, he has been working to rebuild his reputation in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, with little luck.
Working a dead-end delivery job, Hank uses surfing and running to deal with being ostracized as he waits for his probation to end. But everything changes after a chance meeting with Jess Wade, a UNCW student studying to be a marine biologist. Hank and Jess…
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