100 books like Roberta Cowell's Story

Janet Guthrie completely changed the name of the game for women in motorsport here in America.

She was the first woman to compete in iconic races like the Indianapolis 500, and circuits even had to change their rules to allow women into the garage area because of her.

With a physics degree and a pilot's license under her belt, Guthrie changed the name of the game for women in motorsport—but her career fell short thanks to the restrictive nature of the 1970s.

Her autobiography sheds light on the pain and heartache she felt alongside all of her successes.

Hellé Nice had lived a full life before she ever sat behind the wheel.

A career as a model and dancer in Paris enabled her to live a life of luxury in the 1920s, but when she injured her knee skiing in 1929, she turned to a new career: Motor racing.

She went on to compete in races around Europe, setting world records behind the wheel of her bright blue Bugatti.

A freak accident nearly killed her in 1936, and the onset of World War II brought racing to an end. Nice's lush lifestyle saw her accused of being a Nazi collaborator, and records of her accomplishments were scrubbed from the racing world.

Miranda Seymour tracks down Nice's complex legacy and reports it in vivid fashion.

The setting is interwar Europe.

The players are René Dreyfus, a Jewish racing driver, and Lucy Schell, a racing driver and American heiress.

As antisemitism crept through the continent, Dreyfus' successful racing career was choked out by the might of state-funded German engineering—at least, until Schell came along.

With her ample fortune and a home in Paris, Schell began funding her own racing team and immediately signed Dreyfus. Later, when the pressures of Nazi ideology threatened Dreyfus' life, Schell funded a "trip" to the Indianapolis 500 in America in order to help him start a new life.

Faster highlights the complex ways that politics, religion, money, and motorsport intertwine, told so compellingly that you won't want to put this book down.

Back when AAA sanctioned auto racing events in the 1920s, Black men were barred from racing at the highest competitive levels and were subjected to scathing remarks and racism at smaller local venues.

The Brown Bullet tells the story of Rajo Jack, one of the first Black drivers in America who broke down barriers just for a chance to show up at the track.

Even today, Black racers face undue prejudice when attempting to enter a predominately white sport; this book sheds light on the origins of that entrenched discrimination.

Nobody has done more than Stryker to document the modern history of trans people or to fashion trans studies into an academic field. Transgender History is a work of substantial scholarship and also an accessible introduction to the field and the issues on which it’s centered. Each chapter of this short-ish book is really valuable, whether it’s the opening that explains important terms and concepts or the final one assessing what Time declared the “transgender tipping point” in 2014. Stryker is a historian of twentieth-century America, so that’s the focus of her central chapter documenting a century of trans history. Understanding that early history is crucial for the liberatory gains and backlashes that follow, and Transgender History concludes with resources that can help turn its readers into informed and committed activists.

Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.

The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.

Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.

It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing. 

I recommend this book because it gives a broader picture of the women who changed the way women participate in society forever. It wasn’t just building bombs, liberty ships, and planes that women had a part in. It was everything! When I’ve talked to women who lived during that time, and when I read this book, I realized how many ways women changed during that period of history.

This is an exceptionally good middle grade book! It tells what really happened to British children who were evacuated from the cities to the countryside during WWII. It caused me to question my English grandparents about their experiences during WWII. Imagine how people would react today if the government ordered them to put their children on a train to go live with strangers in some other part of the country.

Born in 1934 in Berchtesgaden, in the shadow of Hitler’s Eagles Nest, Irmgard Hunt witnessed the growth of fascist ideology among the people she loved during an otherwise idyllic childhood. As the shadow of World War II fell over the mountain, however, Hunt began to question and then disavow the Nazi doctrines she had accepted as a young child. As time went on and the regime crumbled literally before her eyes, she was vocal in confronting her country’s criminal past and in championing the democratic principles her elders had so easily dismissed.

This book is the catalog of a 2019 exhibition of the same name. It’s a collection of 440 images that cover all facets of Jewish life in the Netherlands during the German occupation. What’s most interesting and compelling are the rare, so-called bystander photos that show what life under Nazi rule looked like for ordinary people going about their lives, both those who were persecuted and those who committed genocide, as well as those who witnessed it. While we can look into the faces of people knowing the horrors that were to come, seeing these images—weddings, dinners, strolls in the park—as a preface to the more familiar images of round-ups, transports, and concentration camps provides deeper insight into history. I revisit the photos in this book often.