Fans pick 100 books like Everything I Don't Know

Published in 2017, Words for War offers work by sixteen Ukrainian poets reacting to the earlier stage of the war there, translated by a number of poets and specialists.

Why is it important to get this kind of testimony to readers? The answer came in 2022—and the very various poems by writers young and old, women and men, in-country and émigrés, funny and tragic, give the reader both the vitamins of knowledge about the country and its people and the pleasures of beautiful, thought-provoking poetry about something you know is truly important.

Doris Kareva (born 1958) is an outstanding poet from the small but powerful Estonian literary community.

Like any outstanding poet, she often does things that work in the original language, but these translations by Irish poet Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov really capture the music, the beats of short lines that accumulate into vivid and rhythmic pictures.

(Plus, how cool is it to have a translator named Ksenofontov? I envy both author and translator, and it turns out that Kareva also translates her translator’s poetry into Estonian.)

Halyna Kruk (born in 1974) has a few poems in the volume Words for War; this is the first book of her work in English, and it has already won a prize for Best Book in poetry translation.

Kruk’s poetry feels very contemporary in style, nicely rendered by her translators, who leapt into action when the war began and immediately reached for Kruk’s work. As the title tells you, it addresses this difficult and tragic moment, but it also reaches beyond the moment to address universal human questions in genuine poetry, not ever mere reportage.

Aco Šopov (1923-1982) is one of the fundamental poets of Macedonia, and indeed the first poet ever to have a whole book of his verse published in Macedonian, a language that had been suppressed for generations.

This book will appear in fall of 2023, but I have already seen some of the translations by Rawley Grau and Christina Kramer online—and they’re dynamite, full of hard-won versions of the thoughtful, deep-dwelling originals. Šopov is not the only brilliant poet of his generation, but he alone can prove that a small nation can produce big poets.

And how are we to know, unless we read them in translation?

This is required reading to understand the Russo-German War.

This two-volume masterpiece was written by Paul Schmidt, who was actually Hitler’s Press Secretary during the war. Schmidt used the nom de plume of “Paul Carrell”, and although one would, at first glance, imagine that this author might write a biased and pro-Nazi apologetic study, that could not be further from the truth.

Carrell/Schmidt actually wrote a very truthful account of the war, pulling no punches and even criticizing Hitler’s leadership and his ideology throughout the study.

Carrell/Schmidt also happens to be an eloquent storyteller. He is the type of author who can manage to place the reader in the middle of the story, as if he/she is witnessing the events live. Very few authors can do this.

I am recommending this book because it is a thorough investigation into the Nazi Eastern policies and their effects in the East. And also because Dr. Reitlinger was a renowned scholar.

I personally loved this book because, even though the topic is serious as it is sad, Dr. Reitlinger managed to write an authentic account of the topic with eloquence and solemnity. The book actually got me interested in the topic.

Published in 1960, I read the book in the late 1970s, and it is one of the books that made me interested in the topic – so much so that it set me on an academic path, which led me to research Nazi Germany’s occupation of eastern Europe, culminating in a work on the subject, to be published in November 2023. The book I have written is the culmination of twenty-plus years of research.

Reading Reitlinger’s work, I realized,… show more.

I like this book because it shows in an exciting and engaging way, that a war is not over, just because it is declared to be over. For many survivors, such as Ruth Mendenberg, it is the beginning of a new war in which they fight to re-establish their identity and their right to a place to call home once again.

This book is a must-read for all people, to never forget what occurred.

Although the topic is serious and sad, Dr. Reitlinger managed to write a concise work on ha Shoah, which is itself a huge undertaking. What I loved about the book is that, here in one volume, one has a complete and thorough coverage of the Holocaust. It is long, but it can be digested given a few weeks of reading.

Again, with all of Reitlinger’s work, the reader is thoroughly immersed in the subject, while not getting tied down by minutia that some authors have a habit of doing. The book taught me that the Holocaust could have possibly been avoided, if men of goodwill had simply acted before Hitler became powerful enough to unleash World War Two.

Edmund Burke, the Irish-born British statesman was right when he said “All Tyranny needs to gain a foothold, is… show more.

Yes, it’s heartbreaking to know that these young people died in the Holocaust, but their words live on.  The author, who is a Holocaust survivor, does an outstanding job of putting each diarist’s thoughts, dreams, and hopes—and fears—in context with his gifted commentary.  Among the excerpted diaries featured in this book is the most famous of them all—Anne Frank’s.

The partnership of these two authors, one, a Lithuanian national and prominent figure and the other, a Jewish/Israeli Nazi hunter, even surprised them both. While they come from the polar opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, their ultimate research collaboration offers the reader a view into the reason why 96% of Lithuanian Jews were murdered during – and after – the Holocaust – many, before the Nazis fully occupied the country. Travelling together throughout Lithuania, they interviewed non-Jewish eyewitnesses, who told them (on the record) what they saw and what they remembered of those horrible days when the Jews were murdered …by bullets… and who collaborated, assisted, and who pulled the trigger. 

I am passionate about the book because both my parents were survivors of the Lithuanian version of the Holocaust. There were very few survivors from Lithuania, and the Vanagaite-Zuroff book helps me understand why. I started learning about… show more.