Here are 52 books that Total War fans have personally recommended if you like
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My firsthand experience of the Cold War influenced my taste in reading and entertainment from an early age. I’ve spent my entire adult life collecting books and movies that showcase adventure and adversity in situations where combinations of war and climate change have brought about the end of life as we knew it. All those influences have inspired me to make my own contributions to this form of literature.
I love epic heroes. From the first page, this author (who was actually two collaborators) presents a hero that is so larger-than-life, it’s just breathtaking. The heroes and villains in this imagined wasteland are so very fun to read, even when the carnage is eye-watering in severity. I’ve never experienced anything else like this.
Doomsday Warrior 1st Novel Doomsday Warrior is a series of science fiction short novels set in 2089 and later, depicting the struggle to reclaim America from the USSR, after a nuclear strike and invasion in 1989 (the first book was written in 1984).
My firsthand experience of the Cold War influenced my taste in reading and entertainment from an early age. I’ve spent my entire adult life collecting books and movies that showcase adventure and adversity in situations where combinations of war and climate change have brought about the end of life as we knew it. All those influences have inspired me to make my own contributions to this form of literature.
This storyline blew me away with its fast pace and realism. All the heartaches and firefights come so fast, you barely have time to catch your breath. I was fascinated by the way so many of the chapters read like scenes from a movie. It made me want to read more.
This story is the first novel in a series about the adventures of a four man elite survival team, set up to keep things under control in post World War III America. In this first story they have to transport the President from war ravaged Washington to a fortress 1000 miles away.
My firsthand experience of the Cold War influenced my taste in reading and entertainment from an early age. I’ve spent my entire adult life collecting books and movies that showcase adventure and adversity in situations where combinations of war and climate change have brought about the end of life as we knew it. All those influences have inspired me to make my own contributions to this form of literature.
I’ve never encountered anything else like this aviation-oriented apocalypse. The author skillfully blends supersonic air combat and cutthroat conquest in a shattered world. This is the most high-octane adventure concept I’ve read in the last 30 years. It grabbed me by the throat and never let go. For many reasons, I still feel influenced by it today.
The first book in the bestselling, action-packed Wingman Series: With America in ashes, and lawlessness threatening to rule land, air, and sea, one pilot stands poised to pull his nation back from the brink of all-out anarchy The Big War started in Western Europe with a Soviet nerve gas attack that laid waste to France, Germany, and Spain. The world's democracies fought back, and pilots like Hawk Hunter led the charge-tearing across the flaming wreckage of the continent at supersonic speeds. They pushed the Russians back and just when victory was in sight, a traitor at the highest level of…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
My firsthand experience of the Cold War influenced my taste in reading and entertainment from an early age. I’ve spent my entire adult life collecting books and movies that showcase adventure and adversity in situations where combinations of war and climate change have brought about the end of life as we knew it. All those influences have inspired me to make my own contributions to this form of literature.
For as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed submarine stories. This author got my attention when he put a post-apocalyptic twist on it. Action and adventure are blended with mystery solving in a way that I still enjoy. The author describes a variety of familiar locations around the world in haunting ways that remind us just how fragile civilization can be.
I’m a science fiction writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. I’m drawn to character-driven stories that imagine hopeful and inclusive futures, and I absolutely love anything to do with robots. My post-apocalyptic Patch Project series is published with Adventure Worlds Press. After working in the theatre for a few years, I completed my Master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. These days, I write novels featuring ensemble casts, found families, and maybe a con artist or two. These are some of my favourite books of all time, I hope you enjoy them!
One of the best post-apocalyptic books I’ve read to date! Mary and Rachel survive a nuclear apocalypse in Rachel’s seaside home. After many long years of surviving and making a new life for themselves, a strange man appears on their shores. Mary decides to make a long journey that changes life for her and Rachel forever. The characters in this book and the writing are so believable, and the centering of books, art, and hope makes this a stand-out from the gray zombie-infested wastelands of recent mainstream post-apocalyptic stories.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, two women seek to preserve the small treasury of books available to them - a gift of knowledge and hope for future generations.
"[A] poignant expression of the durability, grace, and potential of the human spirit." -Jean M. Auel, author of the Earth's Children series
In the 21st Century, civilization is crumbling under the burden of overpopulation, economic chaos, petty wars, a horrific pandemic, and finally, a nuclear war that inevitably results in a deadly nuclear winter.
On the Oregon Coast, two women, writer Mary Hope and painter Rachel Morrow, scratch out a minimal existence as…
I’ve always been fascinated by the strangeness of human character when tested to the limit by overwhelming catastrophe. I’ve always wanted to write a story that brings into stark relief the courage, fear, ambition, tragedy, absurdity, and the ecstatic. In other words, a disaster. And if character is destiny, then an apocalypse maybe the best way to show us who we really are and where we’re going. My debut novel, Delirium focuses on these extremes of character. And after writing it I reached one indelible conclusion: that the human being is the most disturbed creature, but also the most hopeful.
I’ve always preferred those stories of great global catastrophes that remain in a single small location.
In the case of Alas, Babylon the small town of Fort Repose survives the nuclear holocaust because it’s small. Written at the height of the cold war when there were several and very real moments of brinkmanship between the Soviets and Americans.
It’s a great read for another reason: this is a well-informed writer. For instance, here we find that salt is as vital for survival as water? And what good is a doctor if he has no medicine? These are things this little community has to face, but the author is hopeful.
This is one of those books that is a lens into a period in time but is at the same time easily readable and to the point. How Fort Repose deals with nuclear Armageddon is the same story of how all…
“An extraordinary real picture of human beings numbed by catastrophe but still driven by the unconquerable determination of living creatures to keep on being alive.” —The New Yorker
“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away.
But for one small Florida town, miraculously spared against all the odds, the struggle was only just beginning, as the isolated survivors—men and…
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024…
I am a professor of history who specializes in the United States and the Cold War. A large part of my job involves choosing books that are informative, but that the students will actually want to read. That means I often select novels, memoirs, and works of history that have compelling figures or an entertaining narrative. After more than twenty years of teaching, I’ve assigned many different books in my classes. These are the ones that my students enjoyed the most.
By the time I read this book, the Cold War was over, and fears about accidental nuclear war had faded, if not quite totally disappeared. Nevertheless, this one brought me back to my childhood, when movies like War Games and The Day After raised the specter of nuclear holocaust.
It is in the same genre: a technical glitch mistakenly sets in motion America’s nuclear defenses, which could lead to global nuclear war. I was not prepared for the ending (no spoiler!), but it was an effective way to show the dangers of using technology to control America’s nuclear arsenal.
From the New York Times–bestselling authors, this “chilling and engrossing” nuclear-showdown thriller packs “a multi-megaton wallop” (Chicago Tribune).
Originally published during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this suspenseful novel takes off as a group of American bombers—armed with a deadly payload of nuclear weapons—heads towards Moscow, their motives unknown. Suddenly, a nuclear apocalypse looms closer than it ever has, and the lives of millions depend on the high-stakes diplomacy of leaders on both sides of the divide.
The basis for the classic 1964 movie starring Henry Fonda, this two-million-copy bestseller is not only a terrifying thriller, but a fascinating social commentary…
I have always had a passion to engage with the deepest questions of existence, from the interpretation of quantum mechanics to string theory and cosmology. My desire to understand is driven purely by curiosity, and my aim in writing about these topics is to make the wonders of the universe as widely accessible as possible. But scientific knowledge and the advance of technology also has a potentially darker side. It is vital for the future of humanity that science is widely understood so that democratic informed decisions can be made to safeguard against its misuse, and this was the motivation for recommending my list of books.
Command and Control is the gripping story of an accident at an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silo in Arkansas in 1980 that resulted in the explosion of a Titan II missile.
The explosion blew the concrete lid off the silo and sent the missile’s nine-megaton thermonuclear warhead hurtling one hundred metres through the air. Fortunately, the warhead, which had 500 times the explosive power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did not explode.
Interwoven with the minute-by-minute account of this accident, Schlosser gives a riveting history of the development of nuclear weapons by the U.S. military and discusses the mechanisms that have been devised to ensure that they are not detonated unintentionally. He also describes numerous other alarming nuclear mishaps that have occurred over the years.
The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.
"A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating." -Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
"Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety." -San Francisco Chronicle
A myth-shattering expose of America's nuclear weapons
Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of…
I’ve always loved fantasy novels, which is why I write them, though I tend more toward epic fantasy. My father had a great love of nature. It wasn’t unusual for him to stop in the middle of building a fence or walking across a pasture in order to examine a bug or watch a hawk in flight. He taught me the value of animals and the wonder of the world we live in. Because of it, I’m especially drawn to stories where the animals act and think like animals really might, so I can imagine their unique perspectives. Every species is unique, a miracle that they exist at all.
Technically, though it has a fantasy feel, this is a post-apocalyptic science fiction story concerning Per Hiero Desteen, a sort of Knight’s Templar dedicated to recovering the knowledge lost after a nuclear holocaust. Hiero fights antilife telepaths and mutated monsters in a journey to discover a lost, ancient secret in time to save humanity from destruction. Fun stuff, but the charm of the book lies in his telepathic mount, Klootz, a bull morse (think of a giant moose), and Gorm, a telepathic bear who joins him on his mission. Long after you’ve forgotten the battles, the charm of the animals remains.
Per Hiero Desteen was a priest, a telepath -- and a highly trained killer. Together with his great riding moose and the young bear who was his friend, he was on an extraordinary mission. For this was five thousand years after the holocaust known as The Death. Now the evil Brotherhood of the Unclean was waging all-out war against the few remnants of normal humanity, determined to wipe out all traces of its emerging civilization. Hiero's task was to bring back a lost secret of the ancients that might save the humans. But his path lay through the very heart…
A fast-paced literary thriller with a strong sci-fi element and loaded with existential questions. Beyond the entertainment value, this book takes a hard look at the perilous world of publishing, which is on a crash course to meet the nascent, no-holds-barred world of AI. Could these worlds co-exist, or will…
I’ve loved baseball since I was six years old when I watched that ground ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs and propel my New York Mets to their second World Series. I’ve loved film for almost as long. The best way to love something is to think critically about it–put it to the test. That’s why I wrote Baseball: The Movie. It was an effort to avoid unexamined nostalgia, to think hard about these things I love, and to make sure I love them honestly. I’ve spent 10 years as a freelance writer on baseball and movies, but not until I wrote this book did I feel like they had truly passed my test.
Most baseball fans know that director Barry Levinson changed the ending to The Natural when he adapted the book into a film. Instead of striking out, Roy Hobbs hits a game-winning home run into the lights. The movie is full of hope, but the book is wonderfully grim.
It’s a story of hubris and corruption, a baseball noir published in 1952, just as the postwar American dream was starting to dissipate with the Civil Rights Era, McCarthyism, and fears of nuclear holocaust. Malamud writes beautifully about the game he loves while gazing with clear eyes at the country that invented it.
This is a book about heroism - of sorts. Roy Hobbs has an immense natural gift for playing baseball. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands of a crazy girl, and then it is years before he gets another shot. At last, in a few short seasons, or never, he must achieve the towering reputation that he feels is his right.
