Here are 78 books that I Have No Regrets fans have personally recommended if you like
I Have No Regrets.
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I am a historian, and I am fascinated by the interplay and tensions between our moral and material lives. In my books, I try to recover how people in earlier periods thought about good and bad and why they acted the way they did. I try to understand how norms and customs change over time and how we came to think of our own as “normal,” which was all but normal not so long ago. I do not believe historians should play being prophets, but I do believe history can help us make better sense of the present.
I found this book uniquely moving, gripping, and enlightening.
With his diary, Klemperer, a German Jew, captures the increasingly brutal atmosphere of Nazi Germany and what persecution felt like in everyday life. I admire the sharpness with which he describes the various Germans he encountered–and the range of their reactions–as the deportations and mass murder got under way.
It is a remarkable testimony to the good and evil in humanity.
I am a historian, and I am fascinated by the interplay and tensions between our moral and material lives. In my books, I try to recover how people in earlier periods thought about good and bad and why they acted the way they did. I try to understand how norms and customs change over time and how we came to think of our own as “normal,” which was all but normal not so long ago. I do not believe historians should play being prophets, but I do believe history can help us make better sense of the present.
What I admire about this book is the courage to break with the standard narrative of West Germany from 1949 to 1989 as a success story. West Germans did not just settle down in prosperity and comfort but had plenty of angst and fear.
The book does a great job of showing how we can write a history of emotions.
German Angst analyses the relationship between fear and democracy in postwar West Germany. While fear and anxiety have historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, Frank Biess demonstrates the ambivalent role of these emotions in a democratizing society: in West Germany, fear and anxiety both undermined democracy and stabilized it. By taking seriously postwar Germans' uncertainties about the future, this study challenges dominant linear and teleological narratives of postwar West German 'success', highlighting the prospective function of memories of war, National Socialism, and the Holocaust. Postwar Germans projected fears and anxieties that they derived from memories of a catastrophic past into…
I am a historian, and I am fascinated by the interplay and tensions between our moral and material lives. In my books, I try to recover how people in earlier periods thought about good and bad and why they acted the way they did. I try to understand how norms and customs change over time and how we came to think of our own as “normal,” which was all but normal not so long ago. I do not believe historians should play being prophets, but I do believe history can help us make better sense of the present.
There are plenty of books about memory politics and Germans’ slow and difficult way of reckoning with their evil past. What I really like about this book is how it brings to life these complex moral challenges through the story of a relationship between a younger man and an older woman who turns out to have been a camp guard under the Nazis.
The novel is about the tensions between love, responsibility, and forgiveness, but above all, it is about the difficulty of being German after the Nazis.
'A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience' [Independent on Saturday]
For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems.
Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I am a historian, and I am fascinated by the interplay and tensions between our moral and material lives. In my books, I try to recover how people in earlier periods thought about good and bad and why they acted the way they did. I try to understand how norms and customs change over time and how we came to think of our own as “normal,” which was all but normal not so long ago. I do not believe historians should play being prophets, but I do believe history can help us make better sense of the present.
This historical novel is about a young Romanian German who is deported to a Soviet labour camp by Stalin after the Second World War. Herta Müller herself grew up as a member of the Romanian German minority, and the novel is inspired by her conversations with survivors of the camps.
What made this book truly spellbinding for me–in addition to the story–was the playful melody of the language. It is a reminder of how rich and diverse the German language and culture were with the various communities in Central and Eastern Europe until the Second World War and the deportations and expulsions.
'I know you'll return'. These are his grandmother's last words to him. He has them in his head as he boards the truck at 3am on a freezing mid-January morning in 1945. They keep him company during the long journey to Russia. They keep him alive - through hunger, pain, and despair - during his time in the brutal Soviet labour camps. And, eventually, they bring him back home. But when he does return, he finds that an embarrassed, traumatised silence hangs over his harrowing experiences. Even with his two friends, fellow Romanian-Germans who survived the camps with him, the…
The Second World War has always fascinated me, starting when I first entered school. The war had just started and it became even more real with each successive class when we were encouraged to buy war-saving stamps. On the home front, we experienced blackouts and mock air raids. Sugar, meat, butter, alcohol, and even gasoline were rationed. My cousins were overseas and in the thick of it. They always made sure I had an airplane model at Christmas. And as the war wound to a close, they sent me a cap from one from one of the German soldiers. It still intrigues me and still lives in my head.
You can feel the danger lurking behind every day as radio journalist Shirer watched Hitler build on one horror after another.
Reynolds writes in a way you can hear him, in a stye that echoed his broadcasts. Even after the declaration of war, “life here is still quite normal… the theatres and movies, all open and jammed.”
And this item when he went to the front: “At last will get a chance–maybe–to see how this German colossus has been doing it, walking through Belgium, Holland and now, Northern France, so fast.”
What I like about Shirer’s approach is that he takes you along with him on every day’s events. There were so many things he touched on that often got missed in other books. I enjoyed being with him each day and you will, too.
By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is now available in a new paperback edition. CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s-specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany. Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the…
Social history has always been my passion: unless you know how people thought, felt and lived, even down to how they dressed and ate, it is often impossible to understand why they acted as they did. And no period is as fascinating to me as the inter-war years; after WW1, the greatest conflict the world had ever seen, the upcoming generations determined to break barriers, discard the last vestiges of what they saw as hidebound custom, to invent new, freer ways of writing, painting, dancing - and to have fun. And for most of this post-war generation, there was nowhere like Paris.
This three-volume epic that begins in 1918 and ends shortly before its author’s death in 1957 gives an unrivalled picture of the social and political mores that governed a certain section of English society.
Channon, a conscientious Member of Parliament for much of his life, was a crashing snob with a gift for observation and occasional piercing insights into his own character. He knew ‘everybody’ and his accounts of their intimate behavior – and his own – is compelling.
The Sunday Times bestselling edition of Chips Channon's remarkable diaries.
Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson…
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
I am a writer and advocate for survivors of sexual abuse. Since 1998, I have encouraged them to find their voice and use it through my organization, Time To Tell. Being isolated is foundational to our experience, and our culture perpetuates the isolation by often refusing to address it, acknowledge it, or expose it, as well as not listening to–nor believing–survivors. This forces us to remain silent. I am certain that telling is healing. I lead writing circles for survivors to experience community and get support and encouragement. I recommend all these books not only for the wisdom offered but also the direct experience of not being alone in the reading.
Writing, journaling, writing my memoir and play, and writing morning pages (handwriting three pages as soon as I wake up) have all contributed greatly to my healing.
DeSalvo's book has helped me again and again when I get stuck and need a boost to get back to writing. Most pages have highlights I've made in blue marker that jump out at me, reminding me to write, such as "recover the person or self we lost." Amen!
In this inspiring book, based on her twenty years of research, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won't help you; in fact, there's abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging.
DeSalvo's program is based on the best available and most recent scientific studies about the efficacy of using writing as a restorative tool. With insight and…
I started writing about golf years ago… I went from freelancing to working for Golfweek and pretty soon had a career! I thought I had a brilliant idea: a series of mysteries with a golf theme! Then I learned there were about 267 other golf mysteries already out there, starting with Dame Agatha’s Murder on the Links! Oops. I eventually wrote seven Hacker novels, finally getting my golf-writer-turned-sleuth through all four majors. I also published a historical novel set in Scotland (sorry, no golf) and just launched the new Swamp Yankee Mystery series, set in a small Rhode Island town remarkably similar to the one I live in!
John Updike, writing about golf? Well, why not? This novel, from one of America’s greatest writers, is something of a riff on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, in a story about a disgraced minister sent off on a sabbatical. He keeps a daily journal, which is what makes up the novel.
Naturally, this being Updike, there are stories about his affairs, his drinking, his family relationships, and more. But there are also wonderful passages about his golf game. Like much of Updike’s work, this book is thought-provoking and an interesting window into the American mind of the 20th century.
Updike's seventh novel concerns a month of seven days, a month of enforced rest and recreation as experienced by the Reverend Tom Marshfield, sent west from his Midwestern church in disgrace.
I wrestled with big questions as a child, particularly concerning gender inequality. I was aware of the issue as young as 7 years old. I didn’t even feel comfortable challenging the way things were until I was a young adult. Thus began my journey of researching, studying, and embracing women’s rights and gender equality. I feel very passionate about presenting those big questions earlier in the lives of girls, so they start feeling comfortable challenging the places where things don’t make sense, or the areas where inequality still exists. There is a need for more books like these in the market, but I hope you enjoy this list!
Ratchet, the main character, goes against all the stereotypical norms: she doesn’t like fashion, she works on cars and understands mechanical concepts, and, by virtue of her dad, gravitates toward environmentalism.
There’s so much to love about this book: it blends poetry and prose, the supporting characters (including Ratchet’s dad) are often hilariously entertaining, and the story is one of Ratchet finding herself and learning to accept her own unique self.
This heartwarming, coming of age story is the perfect book for middle school girls. Featuring a strong female character named Ratchet, who identifies as a motherless daughter, this relatable story with its illustrated format is particularly suited for 9-12 year old kids who love graphic novels.
If only getting a new life were as easy as getting a new notebook. But it's not.
It's the first day of school for all the kids in the neighborhood. But not for me. I'm homeschooled. That means nothing new. No new book…
I’ve been running for a quarter of a century now, ever since I got the irresistible urge in high school to quit the soccer team and make my way over to cross-country practice junior year. In that time, running has been a source of mental clarity and physical expression for me, a source of joy and even of meaning. Naturally, it has become one of the focuses of my writing life, too. I’ve written three books about running and now write the On the Run column forSport Literate. It is gratifying to write about a sport that has such a rich literature.
Drawing from a year of entries in his running journal and writing beautiful, compressed prose, Gardner explores the relationship between the inner and the outer world of a runner. A veteran of the sport—he’s been at it for decades—and something like a disciple of its spiritual esoterica, he captures those running moments that so many of us struggle to articulate: “One of the reasons you slog through the summer is to be in shape when a day like this appears. A day when you step away from your body and take the body in, this gliding presence no longer yours, though once, you think, it might have been.” Poverty Creek Journal is a meditation on the profundities of a body in motion.
"That rush in between when it all comes undone. Knowing its edge like your own pulse and breathing. As I knew them this morning, racing a 10K in late-spring heat, the taste of panic in the last two miles as everything slipped away, losing time and barely finishing. A tingling in my limbs as if I were driving on ice, the road beneath me suddenly gone, the feeling of that in my hands. Deeper than words, being lost for a moment and then being done. Left with a pounding, stiff-legged stagger."
Spiritual improvisations, radiant acts of attention: echoing Thoreau's Walden,…
