100 books like Samurai!

This one tells the true tale of the last Chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker. His mother was a white woman who had been captured as a teenager by the Comanche in a raid and raised from then on in the tribe. Parker develops into a powerful warrior and a great leader at a time when the white man was making life almost impossible for the Comanche.

The second part of his life is quite different from the first part, and both are equally fascinating. It's another one that I am always sad to finish, but I have listened to it at least five times so far. It never gets old and is an amazing listen. 

Much like the biography of Quanah Parker, this book tells the story of Red Cloud, the last great Chief of the Sioux Indians and the only one to defeat the Americans in war. He's an amazing historical figure and not one that I had learned anything about in school.

I'm fascinated by this period of American history and the complex relations between the Native American tribes and the white settlers. Red Cloud was not only a great warrior and leader of men but also insightful and pragmatic. I found him quite heroic and more interesting than Sitting Bull, who seems more well-known. It's a great book, another one for me that is a joy to revisit regularly. 

We are probably familiar with the hit musical Hamilton, but the historical biography on which it was based is equally compelling. Chernow really makes Alexander Hamilton come to life as a fully rounded, complex person, not just a cardboard cutout of a founding father.

His myriad clashes with Thomas Jefferson, his service under General Washington in the Revolutionary War, and his involvement in one of the first public sex scandals are all fascinating parts of this amazing tome. I've re-read it a number of times, I find it so gripping and tragic. 

This short book is apparently a classic of Japanese modern literature, but I was not aware of it until recently. It was written by a former Japanese soldier about his experience in Burma at the end of World War II. It's nonfiction and is a memoir. But it captures something culturally universal about the human condition and is heartwarming.

It also mostly takes place after the end of hostilities, in case you are not good with violent imagery, as there is almost none of that. I could not put it down and was sad to finish it. 

James Jones's brilliant debut novel must have had a great effect on me because I admit, in many ways, my book covers the same ground – how does a man maintain honor and dignity when constrained to live his life by the choices of other, and much more powerful men? I suppose the difference between our two themes is that the question in my book is about those same choices but wrapped in the question of race. Jones’s characters, while in the military, were dealing with personal issues. My Corporal Buck is dealing with an issue about which all of America is on fire.

From Here to Eternity is 70 years old. I read it in 1969, an eternity ago and it has lasted with me from there to here.  When I was in the Marine Corps I knew everything that was happening to me. But I didn’t know what… show more.

Sons and Soldiers tells the stories of the Ritchie Boys, a special military intelligence unit of the US Army in World War II trained in Camp Ritchie, Maryland and made up of German-Austrian men, often German Jews who had fled Nazi persecution. These men had everything to lose: if they were captured and identified behind enemy lines, they would be killed on the spot. However, they also knew that their special knowledge of the German language and German culture gave them an advantage against Hitler’s army. The Ritchie Boys were critical to the Allied victory. Not surprisingly, those who survived went on to become leaders in American society, great heroes who understood that there are some things worth dying for. 

I read this book as a boy, and I couldn’t put it down. It’s the story of American PT boats in the South Pacific during World War II, and the story behind the title captivated me. Every soldier knows that he or she might be sacrificed by a commander to gain time for a retreat or as part of a super-dangerous mission.

The sailors on the boats in White’s story were living examples of how they could be expendable. Even as a boy, this book made me grateful for what I had and grateful to the members of the uniformed services who protected us. That they would make such a commitment makes me love America even more. 

I love reading true stories of WWII told by people who lived through it. I find it difficult to understand how ordinary men could live, fight, and die in a foreign land without questioning in order to protect the United States; they were certainly true patriots. In the fall of 1944, two hundred true patriots of K Company, 333rd Infantry, 84th Division landed in Europe. For the next one hundred days, they were on the edge of the Allied spearhead into Nazi territory. If you ever wanted to be in the infantry, you need to read this book. 

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. 

Published ten years apart (1984 and 1994), John Lundstrom’s two-volume set was well worth the wait. 

His first installment set an exceptionally high bar with minutely detailed analysis—often including cockpit-to-cockpit matchups—of U.S. and Japanese aerial encounters. Volume One rightly peaks with the vital Battle of Midway in June 1942, while the second covers land and carrier-based operations at Guadalcanal from August to November.

Both volumes place the combatants in the context of time and place including their institutional backgrounds. With numerous veteran contributions dating from the 1970s, neither book could be written today.