100 books like One Man's Justice

By Akira Yoshimura,

Here are 100 books that One Man's Justice fans have personally recommended if you like One Man's Justice. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam

Christopher Goscha Author Of Vietnam: A New History

From my list on memoirs on the Vietnam Wars from a Vietnamese perspective.

Why am I passionate about this?

Who hasn’t seen the classic American movies on the Vietnam War–Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, or Platoon? They are fine films, but have you ever asked yourself where the Vietnamese are? Save for a few stereotyped cameo appearances, they are remarkably absent. I teach the history of the wars in Vietnam at the Université du Québec à Montréal. My students and I explore the French and the American sides in the wars for Vietnam, but one of the things that I’ve tried to do with them is weave the Vietnamese and their voices into our course; this list provides a window into those Vietnamese voices. 

Christopher's book list on memoirs on the Vietnam Wars from a Vietnamese perspective

Christopher Goscha Why did Christopher love this book?

This is an autobiographical novel that will change your perspective on the Vietnam War. The protagonist of the story, Kien, leaves Hanoi to join the ranks of those going south to liberate the country from the Americans and their South Vietnam allies.

It’s 1965. The Americans are invading. Scores of young men and women like Kien march off in a great patriotic wave from the North to save the South. The patriotic groundswell doesn’t last long though, as Bao Ninh plunges us into the brutality of the Vietnam War.

Through Kien, we discover for the first time what the experience of war was for the other side without the patriotic glitz. It’s not pretty, and yet Bao Ninh succeeds in humanizing the North Vietnamese soldier before our eyes.

It makes for a very powerful read. And like so many other soldiers making it home alive, the return to civilian life…

By Bảo Ninh,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Sorrow of War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the semi-autobiographical account of a soldier's experiences. The hero of the story, Kien, is a captain. After 10 years of war and months as a MIA body-collector, Kien suffers a nervous breakdown in Hanoi as he tries to re-establish a relationship with his former sweetheart.


Book cover of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters

Zachary Shore Author Of A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

From my list on knowing your enemy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of international conflict who focuses on understanding the enemy. For most of my career, I have studied why we so often misread others, and how those misperceptions lead to war. The current crisis in Ukraine is just one more example of how the parties involved misunderstood each other. I believe that if we could improve this one ability, we would substantially lessen the likelihood, frequency, and severity of war.

Zachary's book list on knowing your enemy

Zachary Shore Why did Zachary love this book?

Myers, a professor and North Korea watcher, draws on a careful reading of the “Hermit Kingdom’s” cultural products (its political speeches, novels, pamphlets, and more) to tease out a worldview that is too often opaque to outsiders. While escapee literature focuses on how average Koreans suffer under that brutal regime, this book affords us insight into how the regime sees itself – in ways that will surprise you.

By B.R. Myers,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Cleanest Race as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Understanding North Korea through its propagandaA newly revised and updated edition that includes a consideration of Kim Jung Il's successor, Kim Jong-On What do the North Koreans really believe? How do they see themselves and the world around them? Here B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn€”from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity,…


Book cover of Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

Zachary Shore Author Of A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

From my list on knowing your enemy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of international conflict who focuses on understanding the enemy. For most of my career, I have studied why we so often misread others, and how those misperceptions lead to war. The current crisis in Ukraine is just one more example of how the parties involved misunderstood each other. I believe that if we could improve this one ability, we would substantially lessen the likelihood, frequency, and severity of war.

Zachary's book list on knowing your enemy

Zachary Shore Why did Zachary love this book?

Epley, a behavioral scientist, provides an often-humorous take on our daily efforts to read the minds of others. He offers trenchant, real-life examples (in addition to scientific studies) of how we go horribly wrong – and why we sometimes get it right. In one clever experiment, people tapped out the tune of a song on a wooden desk while they hummed it in their heads. The tappers were wildly overconfident that others could identify the song – because it sounded so clear to themselves. Mindwise is a wonderful reminder to get out of our own heads and figure out the limits of what others can perceive.

By Nicholas Epley,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

From leading psychologist Nicholas Epley, Mindwise reveals our real sixth sense - our ability to understand our own minds and the minds of others

Arguably our brain's greatest sense is the ability to understand the minds of others - our sixth sense. In Mindwise, renowned psychologist Nicholas Epley shows that this incredible capacity for inferring what others are thinking and feeling is, however sophisticated, still prone to critical errors. We often misread social situations, misjudge others' characters, or guess the wrong motives for their actions. Drawing on the latest in psychological research, Epley suggests that only by learning more about…


Book cover of Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

Zachary Shore Author Of A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

From my list on knowing your enemy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of international conflict who focuses on understanding the enemy. For most of my career, I have studied why we so often misread others, and how those misperceptions lead to war. The current crisis in Ukraine is just one more example of how the parties involved misunderstood each other. I believe that if we could improve this one ability, we would substantially lessen the likelihood, frequency, and severity of war.

Zachary's book list on knowing your enemy

Zachary Shore Why did Zachary love this book?

This is certainly the nerdiest of my selections. It is simply a collection of analytical assessments from the sharpest minds to study Nazi Germany during WWII. The authors of these reports, most of them Jewish intellectual academics who fled the Third Reich, joined America’s embryonic intelligence community before the CIA existed. The documents show how their deep knowledge of German social forces enabled them to counter the more superficial analysis of military and political officials about Germany’s likely course. As I wrote in my own book, if America had only had comparable experts on Afghanistan, the war there might not have ended as it did.

By Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Secret Reports on Nazi Germany as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

During the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School--Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer--worked as intelligence analysts for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. This book brings together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them published here for the first time. These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as…


Book cover of Nightwise

Lyra R. Saenz Author Of Prelude

From my list on fantasy books where magic and mayhem frolic with robots and mechanisms.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm Lyra R. Saenz. I'm an off-the-clock goth, a steampunk romantic, and a loyal adopter of lonely books. I'm a writer of genre-breakers and witchy makeovers. I've spent my life with either my nose in a book or my heart on the stage, and my passion for art is my drive every day. I grew up watching Star Wars, which is probably the apex of all magic merged with science settings, and I've always wondered why people don't make more of that: a super advanced society where witches and wizards are respected parts of the world.

Lyra's book list on fantasy books where magic and mayhem frolic with robots and mechanisms

Lyra R. Saenz Why did Lyra love this book?

First of all, the main character, Laytham, gets my little bi-sexual heart leaping with excitement. He’s sexy and dark and mysterious. He’s got some serious issues but handles it all with a healthy dose of cynicism and magic.

I love how gritty this book is. It’s the stench of the city mixed with the sweat and arousal of a dance club. I’ve never seen magic done this way, where one of the characters uses the computer to access his own magical network.

I read this book at a time in my life when things just were not going in the direction I wanted them to. It inspired me to take back control of my life. In a lot of ways, it is very cyberpunk, rooted in urban fantasy.

By R.S. Belcher,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In the more shadowy corners of the world, frequented by angels and demons and everything in- between, Laytham Ballard is a legend. It's said he raised the dead at the age of ten, stole the Philosopher's Stone in Vegas back in 1999, and survived the bloodsucking kiss of the Mosquito Queen. Wise in the hidden ways of the night, he's also a cynical bastard who stopped thinking of himself as the good guy a long time ago. Now a promise to a dying friend has Ballard on the trail of an escaped Serbian war criminal with friends in both high…


Book cover of The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive

Herlinde Pauer-Studer Author Of Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge

From my list on Nazi perpetrators.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna (Austria), interested in ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law. I am fascinated by the work of classical philosophers—foremost, Immanuel Kant and David Hume. A particularly interesting question for me concerns how political and legal systems shape people's identity and self-understanding. One focus of my research is on the distorted legal framework of National Socialist Germany. I wrote, together with Professor J. David Velleman (New York University), Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge. In German: "Weil ich nun mal ein Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker bin." Der Fall des SS-Richters Konrad Morgen. 

Herlinde's book list on Nazi perpetrators

Herlinde Pauer-Studer Why did Herlinde love this book?

How could so many Nazi perpetrators escape to South America? Most relied on the help of a bishop of the Catholic Church in the Vatican, Alois Hudal.

Sands describes the structure of this support system (the so-called ratline) through the story of former SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Gustav Wächter, the governor of Galicia (1942–1944), who was responsible for the deportation of nearly 500,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps.

Wächter's post-war escape to Argentina actually ended in Rome, where he died of an infection in July 1949. Sands offers a riveting analysis of how this man found his way into the Nazi party, rose to a position that implicated him in mass murder, and how, with the support of his wife, he managed to hide in the Austrian mountains for years after the war. Sands also reflects on how difficult it is for the next generation to face up to the…

By Philippe Sands,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, Cold War espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican, and the Nazi escape route to Perón's Argentina,"the Ratline"—from the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street.

"Hypnotic, shocking, and unputdownable." —John le Carré, internationally renowned bestselling author

Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon…


Book cover of Mother Night

Jeff Berney Author Of The Fall of Faith

From my list on feed your dark side.

Why am I passionate about this?

Even as a boy, I could see (or maybe just sense) the darkness that resides just below the surface of this otherwise pleasant world. We all have stories, and the ones we hold closest to ourselves are often the darkest. Those are the stories that fascinate me the most. What are the limits of man’s menace? What causes seemingly normal people to snap? To turn on their fellow man? I could do one of two things with this fascination: become a sociopath (perhaps psychopath) or an author of dark, twisted, twisty tales. As you know, I chose the latter. 

Jeff's book list on feed your dark side

Jeff Berney Why did Jeff love this book?

If you’ve read any of my novels, you know I like my protagonists to be flawed. The more morally complex the main character, the better, in my opinion. And how can you get more morally questionable than an American who becomes a propagandist for the Nazi party during WWII? But wait. Is he a Nazi? Or is he just playing a part?

Another thing I love is when genre fiction has a larger moral theme that runs through it. What can I say? I don’t like to be preached at, but I do prefer stories with a strong point of view (whether I believe in it or not). And what bigger question can a book tackle than the one Vonnegut plays with in this book? Are we what we pretend to be? If you’re a WWII buff, or even if you just enjoy peeking into the darkest reaches of human…

By Kurt Vonnegut,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Mother Night as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

“A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer

“A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter .…


Book cover of The Nazi's Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal

Ettie Zilber Author Of A Holocaust Memoir of Love & Resilience: Mama's Survival from Lithuania to America

From my list on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after World War 2, Ettie immigrated with her parents to the USA. She grew up and was educated in New York City and Pennsylvania and immigrated to Israel after completing graduate school. After retiring from a career in international schools in 6 countries, she currently resides in Arizona with her husband. She is a Board member for the Phoenix Holocaust Association and devotes much time to giving presentations to youth and adults worldwide. 

Ettie's book list on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe

Ettie Zilber Why did Ettie love this book?

While the author and I came from different sides of the same fence, I found myself empathizing with her deathbed promise, her fears, her worries, her self-doubt, and her commitment to finding, and eventually exposing, the truth. Setting out to write what should have been a fairly ‘easy’ biographical tribute to her late grandfather – hailed as a Lithuanian hero- she discovered - and uncovered - details and documents which shattered her world and confirmed “the gossip.” She began to doubt the stories she was told as a child and the people who told them- both in her Lithuanian-American neighborhood and back in the old country. What a page-turner…what agony and pain…until she finally made her courageous decision. Bravo, Silvia.

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 Foti’s book helps…

By Silvia Foti,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Nazi's Granddaughter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hero–or Nazi?

Silvia Foti was raised on reverent stories about her hero grandfather, a martyr for Lithuanian independence and an unblemished patriot. Jonas Noreika, remembered as “General Storm,” had resisted his country’s German and Soviet occupiers in World War II, surviving two years in a Nazi concentration camp only to be executed in 1947 by the KGB. His granddaughter, growing up in Chicago, was treated like royalty in her tightly knit Lithuanian community.

But in 2000, when Silvia traveled to Lithuania for a ceremony honoring her grandfather, she heard a very different story—a “rumor” that her grandfather had been a…


Book cover of The Huntress

Bruce Stachenfeld Author Of Faythe of North Hinkapee: The Saga of a Young Woman’s Quest for Justice and Love in Colonial America

From my list on irrepressible, exciting and heroic female lead characters that you will never forget.

Why am I passionate about this?

I made up Faythe of North Hinkapee by being a jerk! I was ranting about how bad a "best seller" book I had read was. My wife looked at me and said, "So, could you write a bestseller?" I was challenged, and then, somehow, this book just tumbled out. It was about a girl in Colonial Timesher family burned as witchesvowing vengeance and how she gets it. My wife looked at me and said: “My God, that could be a bestseller!’ My kids also loved the story. For about twenty years, I planned to write it, and after a ton of work, I finally finished.

Bruce's book list on irrepressible, exciting and heroic female lead characters that you will never forget

Bruce Stachenfeld Why did Bruce love this book?

Any time Kate Quinn writes a book, I grab it immediately. Her characters are always amazing women doing amazing things. This one is, I think, her best.

The character of Nina is possibly the most interesting single character I have ever read about. I can’t describe Nina as words just fail me. I will never forget her. Nor will I forget the evil huntress either. 

This is World War II historical fiction at its absolute best, as Ms. Quinn does super solid research.

By Kate Quinn,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel, THE ALICE NETWORK, comes another fascinating historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America.

In the aftermath of war, the hunter becomes the hunted...

Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy…


Book cover of The Nazi Hunters

Josh Weiss Author Of Sunset Empire

From my list on hunting and battling Nazi war criminals.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised in a proud Jewish home, I was instilled with an appreciation for my cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, I am utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, I became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment. I currently reside in Philadelphia with my wife, Leora, and adorable Cavapoo, Archie.

Josh's book list on hunting and battling Nazi war criminals

Josh Weiss Why did Josh love this book?

All fiction has some kind of basis in reality.

The bestsellers penned by Forsyth, Levin, and Goldman would not exist without the true stories of the men and women who worked tirelessly in the years after World War II to bring escaped Nazis to justice.

Nagorski’s wonderfully researched work of non-fiction shines a much-deserved light on those individuals who sought closure on behalf of the murdered 6 million when no one else cared to do so: Fritz Bauer, Simon Wiesenthal, Tuvia Friedman, Elizabeth Holtzman, Beate, and Serge Klarsfeld, and more.

By Andrew Nagorski,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

More than seven decades after the end of the Second World War, the era of the Nazi Hunters is drawing to a close as they and the hunted die off. Their saga can now be told almost in its entirety.
After the Nuremberg trials and the start of the Cold War, most of the victors in World War II lost interest in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Many of the lower-ranking perpetrators quickly blended in with the millions who were seeking to rebuild their lives in a new Europe, while those who felt most at risk fled the continent. In Pursuit…


Book cover of The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam
Book cover of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters
Book cover of Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

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Interested in war criminals, Japan, and war crimes?

War Criminals 14 books
Japan 516 books
War Crimes 16 books