The best books on the most misunderstood men in history's wars and most famous tragedies

The Battle of Thermopylae is the story that first set off my profound interest in history. Nothing surpasses the courage and drama of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans who stood against Xerxes’ overwhelming force during the Persian Wars of 480BC. As far as I’m concerned, the only author who has done the stirring tale true justice is Pressfield.

I heard this story for the first time when I was a child of five, oddly enough at Sunday School, and was awestruck.  It was repeated by chance when I was 13 watching the Hollywood movie, The 300 Spartans with Robert Taylor in the lead as King Leonidas. When the 10,000 Persian Immortals, with their torrent of arrows, finished off the last of the Spartans who’d formed a small circle to protect their wounded king, I was dismayed and inspired for the rest of my life.

It’s fair to say that I could not put this book down. I read it in one sitting and when I had to get up and walk around, I took it with me, reading as I went. The movie was brilliant, but hard as it is to believe, the book was even better. It is a major tribute to human endurance, of forgiveness, and the redemptive power of beautiful music.

Apart from being a page-turner, I believe that it’s a very fine work that for ethical and moral reasons should be read and remembered. The strength it took him to survive and to continue on for the rest of his life after what he’d seen and lost is awe-inspiring and a lesson to all of us given that he still persisted, with his exquisite music, to show the post-war world that in the end love and beauty will always win out.

It’s always good to see a story told from both sides, to look at the tragedy and futility of war from every point of view. This book is a poignant and true psychological insight into the mind of a man who holds tight to his vow to fight against the principles of hate and the farce of young men of one mind, yet in different uniforms, pitting themselves against each other for no real reason at all.

By the time I read this book, I was pretty much set on my path of writing books about various wars and the mistaken, pre-conceived ideas history has given us in regard to the famous people who fought in them. That, and the false, grand and glorious illusion that war is worthwhile. It was so good to know that a fine author such as Remarque was thinking the same way… and long before I did!

This book is gripping from first to last page, giving the reader the inside running on what really went on behind the scenes of Nazi Germany. Although it looks like a tome, I read through it at the rate of knots, because who could help being fascinated by what such a man as Speer had to say? It was the book that inspired me to write my own—the story of Speer’s Life.

So here we shift to the Second World War, but the sentiment’s the same. Speer was a highly educated and most interesting man whose point of view counts more than most because he had his finger right on the pulse and knew exactly what made Hitler and his evil tick. The problem was that by the time Speer realized the extent of that evil and how much he’d allowed himself to be drawn in, it was too late to escape. So, presuming that he was, in fact, a decent man at heart, the rest of his life became an altogether different hell. 

Another classic… and with good reason. It’s a masterpiece that puts a whole new slant on the American Civil War, its story and hero being far from the wonderful Gone With the Wind epic, but equally as riveting. It may not stir the juices of gallantry, but it makes you think and impels you to read it again and again.

I think it’s easy to see that there’s a prevailing theme in my choices of the best books I’ve read for here again, we have a controversial hero that tests the reader’s way of thinking and willingness to side with what is not the norm. In other words, it’s so refreshing to see any author put a whole new spin on things and turn conventional beliefs upside down.