Fans pick 100 books like The American People in World War II

By David M. Kennedy,

Here are 100 books that The American People in World War II fans have personally recommended if you like The American People in World War II. 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 No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

John E. Schmitz Author Of Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War

From my list on United States during the World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse. 

John's book list on United States during the World War II

John E. Schmitz Why did John love this book?

Among historians, we know there are few better as academics and storytellers than Goodwin. I love her writing style, and the coverage of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt is unmatched. Small wonder that it was a NYT bestseller! I think any reader would enjoy this magisterial work. 

By Doris Kearns Goodwin,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked No Ordinary Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A chronicle of the US and its leaders during the period when modern America was created. It narrates the interrelationships between the inner workings of the Roosevelt White House and the destiny of the US, painting a portrait that fills in a historical gap in the story of America under Roosevelt.


Book cover of Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II

John E. Schmitz Author Of Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War

From my list on United States during the World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse. 

John's book list on United States during the World War II

John E. Schmitz Why did John love this book?

As part of the American History Series, I thoroughly enjoyed Winkler’s book because it provides solid general coverage of America’s “arsenal of democracy”—the mobilization for war, along with an examination of our society at war including mood and morale along with shortages and controls; the book also has a chapter dealing with outsiders and ethnic groups and finally the last chapter is dedicated to politics and war. 

I find the book provides excellent coverage of major home front issued during the war. I would highly recommend to any reader who wants to know more about the United States home front during the war.

By Allan M. Winkler,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Home Front U.S.A. as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New scholarship on World War II continues to broaden our understanding. With each passing year we know more about the triumphs and the tragedies of America's involvement in the momentous conflict. Tapping into this greater awareness of the accomplishments of both soldiers and civilians and a better recognition of the consequences of decisions made, Allan Winkler presents the third edition of his highly popular series volume.

Informed by the latest historical literature and featuring many new thoughtfully chosen photographs, the third edition of Home Front U.S.A. continues to ponder the question of "the good war," the moral implications of the…


Book cover of For the Duration...: The United States Goes to War, Pearl Harbor-1942

John E. Schmitz Author Of Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War

From my list on United States during the World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse. 

John's book list on United States during the World War II

John E. Schmitz Why did John love this book?

I recommend Kennett’s book because it really dives into those first few weeks and months after Pearl Harbor. I found it a fascinating tale of how a nation mobilizes and can if it has the energy and will, go from a peacetime to a wartime footing pretty quickly.

I would also recommend this book because it makes use of sources such as comic books and soap operas alongside the more traditional archival documents and oral histories. I highly recommend, a fun read, too!

By Lee Kennett,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Rich in detail from archives, interviews, and sweeping research, this book surveys the first six months of the United States war effort after entering World War II


Book cover of Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War

John E. Schmitz Author Of Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War

From my list on United States during the World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse. 

John's book list on United States during the World War II

John E. Schmitz Why did John love this book?

I love Fussell’s books, and this one is my favorite. Fussell served and fought in World War II, and any reader might recognize his name as being interviewed and used in numerous films and documentaries, including Band of Brothers.

The book is very satirical, and chapter titles like Chickenshit, an Anatomy, The Real War will never get in the Books, and Drinking far too much, Copulating too little give some idea about Fussell’s background as a writer, literary scholar, and philosopher of sorts—and he has won numerous writing awards—I cannot think Fussell would disappoint any interested reader!  

By Paul Fussell,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

World War II has been romanticized almost beyond recognition by "the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty". In this study, Paul Fussell goes behind the familiar diplomacy and heroics of history to examine the blunders, petty tyrannies, inconveniences, and deprivations that are many British and American people's memory of the War. There are lively sections on the role of drinking, tobacco, and sex in the war and on the home front; on propaganda; about writers and magazines who recorded the war or who attempted to keep aloft literary standards in a difficult time; on wartime slang and…


Book cover of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

Iwan W. Morgan Author Of FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America

From my list on why FDR was the greatest American president.

Why am I passionate about this?

I consider FDR the greatest of all presidents for leading America with distinction in the domestic crisis of the Great Depression and the foreign crisis of World War 2 and creating the modern presidency that survives today in the essential form he established. I have written books on Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan during fifty years as a US history professor in UK universities. I always intended to write a book about how FDR reinvented the presidency that these Republicans inherited, something I finally did in ‘retirement’. My five chosen books explain the challenging times he faced and the leadership skills he displayed in meeting them.     

Iwan's book list on why FDR was the greatest American president

Iwan W. Morgan Why did Iwan love this book?

This Pulitzer Prize-winning study is the best single-volume history of America in the Age of FDR.  Meticulously researched, ambitiously conceived, and vividly written, it crafts superb portraits of the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kennedy offers a balanced assessment of FDR’s New Deal, concluding that his reforms enhanced the socio-economic security of millions of Americans despite their overall failure in the 1930s to achieve economic recovery, which would only come about through the crucible of war in the early 1940s. However, the real heroes of the book are the American people for their resilience and resolve in the face of the Great Depression and World War 2, the two greatest challenges the United States faced in the twentieth century.  

By David M. Kennedy,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom from Fear tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefullly consuming capital and inflicting untold misery…


Book cover of The Curator's Daughter

Sarah Sundin Author Of Until Leaves Fall in Paris

From my list on World War II novels to inspire you.

Why am I passionate about this?

Sarah Sundin’s love for the stories of World War II comes from family members who served during the war on the US Home Front and abroad. Her passion for research and travel has fueled her award-winning novels. The horrors of the war brought out the worst in humanity. Yet they also brought out the best in humanity, and those stories—of people who chose kindness and courage and right in trying times—are the stories that inspire us to choose kindness and courage and right in our own trying times.

Sarah's book list on World War II novels to inspire you

Sarah Sundin Why did Sarah love this book?

This dual timeline novel is expertly researched and woven into a tapestry. In 1940, a German archaeologist is forced to marry an SS officer—and to catalog art stolen from the Jews. In modern times, a young woman with a traumatic past in the neo-Nazi movement works with the Holocaust Museum to fight hate crimes. Their entwining stories show the courage needed to stand up against racism—and the necessity of doing so, no matter the cost.

By Melanie Dobson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A young girl, kidnapped on the eve of World War II, changes the lives of a German archaeologist forced into the Nazi Party and―decades later―a researcher trying to overcome her own trauma.

1940. Hanna Tillich cherishes her work as an archaeologist for the Third Reich, searching for the Holy Grail and other artifacts to bolster evidence of a master Aryan race. But when she is reassigned to work as a museum curator in Nuremberg, then forced to marry an SS officer and adopt a young girl, Hanna begins to see behind the Nazi facade. A prayer labyrinth becomes a storehouse…


Book cover of A Spy Above the Clouds

Nancy Cole Silverman Author Of The Navigator's Daughter

From my list on women of WW2 and their untold stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love to travel, and I’m always interested in the history of where I visit, and what unusual and little known stories I might pick up. I spent twenty-five years working in news and talk radio and I suppose that’s why my fingers itch to get to a keyboard when I hear of an event or someone interesting that I’d like to meet on the pages of one of my books. These days it’s where I spend most of my time, crafting mysteries both national and international and always with sense of suspense, and for good measure, a little whimsey.   

Nancy's book list on women of WW2 and their untold stories

Nancy Cole Silverman Why did Nancy love this book?

I love books about women who don’t hear the word ‘No.” And A Spy Above the Clouds is just such a book.

Constance Vivier-Clarke, “Viv” is a young American, a once hopeful Olympic downhill skiers whose pampered life is on the skids. World War 2 had broken out and she’s been shoved to the sidelines, told to go home and get married. 

But Viv has other ideas and talks her way into driving an ambulance for the American Hospital in Paris, and eventually, because of her skiing abilities, becomes a member of “Churchill’s Angels” working with the resistance to carry secret messages across the French Alps. 

This is a book that inspires. A book that challenges. And at the end of the day a book that readers will not soon forget.  

By Ciji Ware,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Spy Above the Clouds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A SPY ABOVE THE CLOUDS - BOOK 2 OF THE "AMERICAN SPY SISTERS" NOVELS INSPIRED BY THE BRAVE U.S. WOMEN SECRET AGENTS WHO FOUGHT THE NAZIS IN WW II.


For the first time in her pampered life, the headstrong American, Constance Vivier-Clarke, has been pressed into doing something useful for a change. Driving an ambulance for the American Hospital in Paris, "Viv" is caught in the crossfire when the Nazis march into Paris. She makes a harrowing getaway over the Pyrenees into neutral Spain and on to London in hopes of finding a role to play in the fight against…


Book cover of The Nazis Go Underground

Robert Temple Author Of Drunk on Power Vol 1: A Senior Defector's Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State

From my list on the inner workings of Nazi Germany.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I find a big story that has not come out, which has massive relevance for history and for the entire world, I go all out to bring it to light, as I have done with this book. Most of the books I have written have been devoted to telling big, unknown stories that concern the world. (Examples: alien intelligence, the origins of ancient civilisations, the Chinese contribution to the history of inventions, the existence of optical technology in antiquity, who were the people who tried and executed King Charles I and why did they do it.) I simply had to expose this information to the public.

Robert's book list on the inner workings of Nazi Germany

Robert Temple Why did Robert love this book?

This book was originally published by Doubleday, New York, in 1944. This book also contains material obtained from Heinrich Pfeifer, not only from Pfeifer’s own experience but from Pfeifer’s secret network of sympathisers and informants deep within the Nazi Establishment.

It is alarming in the extreme, detailing as it does how the Nazis of the SS and SD had since 1943 started planning to metastasize their doctrines all round the world, and found a Nazi International organisation, with the eventual hope of creating a Fourth Reich which was not dependent upon the territory of Germany, but was spread across the world invisibly, so that no armies could ever conquer it.

They planned the ratlines and escape routes to all the friendly countries such as Argentina and Chile. Their ratline HQ was in Madrid, with the full cooperation of the Franco Government. One of the two chief organisers was SS Lieutenant…

By Curt Reiss,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Its existence is known only by the effects of its action.' Author Curt Riess on what happens when an organisation goes underground. Written in 1944, thus contemporary to the events of the Second World War and Nazi Germany, The Nazis Go Underground describes how the Nazis planned and organised their descent into the underground as early as 1943. At this stage of the war, the situation for the Third Reich looked grim. With Bormann and Himmler as its architects, the Nazi party would go underground and prepare for World War III from the shattered ruins of Berlin. German generals were…


Book cover of The Nazi Conscience

Richard N. Lutjens Jr. Author Of Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941–1945

From my list on the Holocaust and how humanity failed.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a German History professor who focuses on the Holocaust, but I’ve been educating myself on the topic since 5th grade, when a friend suggested some children’s literature on the Holocaust. So, I guess this is a topic that has interested me for some thirty years now. I can’t stop asking why, I can’t stop reading, and I can’t stop educating, especially as Holocaust denial and antisemitism are on the rise. History, in general, can teach us so much about who we are and who we have the potential to become. The Holocaust is a prime example of what happens when humanity fails to achieve its potential.  

Richard's book list on the Holocaust and how humanity failed

Richard N. Lutjens Jr. Why did Richard love this book?

One of the most difficult facets of Nazism for my college students to grasp is that the Nazis had a sense of ethics and morals. It’s easy to look at the horrors of Nazism, rightfully condemn the Nazis as monstrous, and congratulate ourselves on having the moral and ethical fiber that would never allow us to engage in such atrocities. The thing is, though, that so much of the evil committed in this world is committed by people who think they are doing what’s right. Koonz’s examination of Nazi morals is an uncomfortable read but a necessary one. It forced me and it forces my students to confront the unpleasant truth that evil also has a sense of “moral” and “immoral.”

By Claudia Koonz,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron. In fact, the perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethnic community and denounced outsiders.

Claudia Koonz's latest work reveals how racial popularizers developed the infrastructure and rationale for genocide during the so-called normal years before World War II. Her careful reading of the voluminous Nazi writings on race traces the transformation of longtime Nazis' vulgar anti-Semitism into a racial ideology that seemed credible to the vast majority of ordinary Germans who never joined the Nazi Party. Challenging…


Book cover of Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II

Alexander J. Field Author Of The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War

From my list on U.S. mobilization for World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables. 

Alexander's book list on U.S. mobilization for World War II

Alexander J. Field Why did Alexander love this book?

The book gives great insight into the role of organized efforts at persuasion in establishing and reinforcing much of what we think we know about mobilization for the war.

Business wanted credit for the success of war production, even though most of it was achieved in government owned, government operated (GOGO) or government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants. The public sector played a much larger role in planning, directing, and controlling the mobilization effort than business wished the American public to acknowledge.

By Mark R. Wilson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

During World War II, the United States helped vanquish the Axis powers by converting its enormous economic capacities into military might. Producing nearly two-thirds of all the munitions used by Allied forces, American industry became what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the arsenal of democracy." Crucial in this effort were business leaders. Some of these captains of industry went to Washington to coordinate the mobilization, while others led their companies to churn out weapons. In this way, the private sector won the war-or so the story goes.
Based on new research in business and military archives, Destructive Creation shows that…


Book cover of No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Book cover of Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II
Book cover of For the Duration...: The United States Goes to War, Pearl Harbor-1942

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