We asked 9,000+ authors for their favorite books. 825 authors picked a book connected to World War 2, here are their favorites and why. Also, check out the best WW2 fiction and nonfiction.
My father, John Bradley, was a veteran and fought on Iwo Jima in World War 2 in 1945. Later I walked in the sands of Iwo Jima and eventually wrote four books about war. I am a New York Times best-selling author and Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood made my first book into a movie, Flags of Our Fathers. I've been traveling in and learning about Asia since 1974, when I attended Sophia University in Tokyo. I am also the host of a podcast called Untold Pacific that mines 40 years of my life to create historical travelogues about the American experience on the other side of the Pacific.
This is the best book on the Pacific campaign in World War 2. Tarawa was a small island the USA wanted to build a landing strip on and the Japanese put 5,000 soldiers in elaborate well built bunkers to defend it. Robert was a war correspondent who was on the beach for the invasion. You are right there with him as he is huddled in fear behind a burned-out tank during the landing. You can feel the bullets pinging near your head and see the dead all around you.
It was a massacre. It started with a rare low tide that prevented the landing craft from reaching the beach. The American troops had to wade through the water while Japanese machine guns raked them. The water turned red with American blood. Robert was there for everything and wrote it all. Even the aftermath as he surveyed the scene with the…
In the summer of 1943, at the height of World War II, battles were exploding all throughout the Pacific theater. In mid-November of that year, the United States waged a bloody campaign on Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll, the most heavily fortified Japanese territory in the entire Pacific. They were fighting to wrest control of the island to stage the next big push toward Japan-and one journalist was there to chronicle the horror.
Dive into war correspondent Robert Sherrod's battlefield account as he goes ashore with the assault troops of the U.S. Marines 2nd Marine Division in Tarawa. Follow…
I have written one complete WW2 saga series, Lily Baker, and am currently writing a second series, The Library Girls. I am addicted to reading about the period and can lose hours and hours doing factual research as well. My mother was a Cockney, and I became immersed in her wartime stories, mostly about the fun she had but also about her many struggles. I love stories about strong women overcoming adversity, and during WW2, many showed the world how capable and resilient they were. I have a Master's Degree in Professional Writing and write occasional magazine articles.
I loved the way when reading this book, I learned a lot about the Blitz and the problems faced by Londoners, their struggles, and their strengths.
The main character, Gertie, is relatable, and I was keen to find out how she overcomes the trials and tribulations she faces. It is a warm and touching story about Gertie’s love of people and books (she has a bookshop). I loved her positive attitude even when her husband died.
I found it one of those books I couldn’t put down but didn’t want it to end.
'A warm and tender tale about the power and healing of friendship and community and the magic of books' - Ruth Hogan
As the bombs began to fall, the book club kept their hopes alive...
The most emotional, uplifting and captivating story of wartime London and the extraordinary power of books to shine a light and draw people together in the darkest of days, inspired by true events.
London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her…
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…
I am an unextraordinary individual with an ordinary skill set including strengths and weaknesses. Yet, my life experiences have caused me to reach deep inside and find my own greatness to face seemingly impossible obstacles in my path. My writing reflects this hopeful overcoming and undaunted spirit. I have learned that heroes only exist because they must face daunting villains. Such villains can arise from other individuals, outside forces, life circumstances, and even from within ourselves. Yet, I have learned that villains are not a threat to destroy us, they are in fact the vehicles by which we become heroes in our own story. There are no heroes without villains.
I love this departure from the other books mentioned. These two completely separate groups of people whose lives intersect in a horrible tragedy illustrate the randomness and brutality of war.
Each group is sympathetic in their attempt to carve out a meaningful existence amidst the chaos and loss of all-out war. I find the experiences of occupants of the doomed German town juxtaposed with the character and daily courage of the members of the bomber squadron fascinating and compelling.
I find the author’s ability to bring us into the lives of each character and walk with them almost magical. This book changed my life and view of all wars.
The classic novel of the Second World War that relates in devastating detail the 24-hour story of an allied bombing raid.
Bomber is a novel of war. There are no victors, no vanquished. There are simply those who remain alive, and those who die.
Bomber follows the progress of an Allied air raid through a period of twenty-four hours in the summer of 1943. It portrays all the participants in a terrifying drama, both in the air and on the ground, in Britain and in Germany.
In its documentary style, it is unique. In its emotional power it is overwhelming.…
As a teacher, I spent forty years at the chalkface before finally achieving my ambition to be a published writer. My first novel was about a child migrant to Australia; my second about a little girl on the kinder transport. I wanted to write about strong women in world war two. All three of the mothers in my stories are separated from their children and have to make some tough decisions. I hope my readers will remember them for their courage and tenacity and that they’ll enjoy reading about them as much as I’ve enjoyed creating them.
I’m always intrigued by the stories older people have to tell about their war time experiences. I’m so glad I spoke to my own father about the war before he died, and I try to recognise this in my own novels. Suzanne shows us so well how a seemingly frail and elderly woman can hide a multitude of secrets, and Eva’s story is fascinating and beautifully told.
'Expect a tale of love, courage and being brave in the most dangerous of times' Woman's Way You can pay a terrible price for keeping a promise...
Evelyn Taylor-Clarke sits in her chair at Forest Lawns Care Home in the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by residents with minds not as sharp as hers. It would be easy to dismiss Evelyn as a muddled old woman, but her lipstick is applied perfectly, and her buttons done up correctly. Because Evelyn is a woman with secrets and Evelyn remembers everything. She can never forget the promise she made to the…
I have visited all the major wine regions since I developed my passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in luxury hotels in London and around the world. To learn more about wine, I studied to become a French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar, joined the Champagne Academy in France, and recently completed a two-year Diploma in Wine at the WSET School in London. I’ve also worked two harvests as a winemaker at Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia in 2020 and Trius Winery in Niagara, Ontario in 2021. My novels are inspired by my studies, work experience, and travels through the world’s best wine regions.
This book blew my mind. It is the antithesis to the previous book I recommended reading, Wine & War, and essential reading to understand both sides of a morally complicated time and issue. Just as there were many heroic acts to save French wine from Nazi plunder, there were also many collaborators amongst the winemakers navigating through challenging times trying to survive and keep their domaines, maisons, and chateaux afloat.
It’s always easy to look back on history from the safety of the present; however, casting judgment on individuals and their actions shouldn’t be done lightly. The book reads more like a historical textbook but shouldn’t be overlooked or discarded based solely on its prose or limited subject matter.
I highly recommend this book. It delves into the ever-fascinating history of French wine and the compromises that were made by regular people trying to survive during the Second World War…
During the Second World War, French wine was hardly a trivial product. Indeed, following the Fall of France, it proved to be one of the most valuable French commodities in the eyes of the Nazi leaders. In 1940, 'Weinf hrer' (official delegates and wine experts appointed by Berlin), were sent to all the wine regions of France to coordinate the most intense looting that the country had ever seen.
Alongside the very ambiguous relationship of the Vichy Regime and the collaboration of many French professionals with the occupiers, this immense programme of wine collection was a drama that many would…
Glyn Harper has been researching and writing military history for over forty years. He is the author of numerous best-selling books on military history and is also an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. A former army officer, Glyn is New Zealand’s only Professor of War Studies.
The Day of Battle was Volume Two of Rick Atkinson’s acclaimed Liberation Trilogy. While all three volumes of this series are well worth reading, Atkinson was at his best in the second volume which deals with the much-neglected campaigns of Sicily and Italy. The doyen of British military history and a veteran of the Italian campaign, the late Sir Michael Howard wrote that The Day of Battle was ‘one of the truly outstanding records of the Second World War’. I think it is too.
In An Army at Dawn - winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of the Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north. The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill and their military advisors engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once underway, the commitment to…
A breathtaking journey across Iran where war and superstition, jealousy and betrayal, and passion and loyalty rage behind the impenetrable walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter.
Against the tumultuous background of World War II, Dr. Yaran will find himself caught in the thrall of the…
This book is a history of the Battle of Britain, but one focusing more on the common folk and non-aviation personnel that held England together, upright, and unconquered during the German onslaught that followed the collapse of France. Meticulously researched, painstakingly analyzed, and somewhat shocking in its conclusions.
Lord, what an eye-opener! This book shows just how deep into totalitarianism a democracy can sink, just how fascistic a democracy can become overnight, and just how riven with class strife and unfair treatment the UK was throughout the battle.
Here are a few examples of the things that were happening during that time.
1) Given the shortage of coal miners and an unwillingness to pay the miners a fair wage, something on the order of twenty thousand young men were effectively enslaved, not conscripted to fight, but enslaved, to mine coal.
2) The British people were lied to consistently and continuously…
Immortalized in Churchill's often quoted assertion that never before "was so much owed by so many to so few," the top-down narrative of the Battle of Britain has been firmly established in British legend: Britain was saved from German invasion by the gallant band of Fighter Command Pilots in their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the public owed them their freedom. Richard North's radical re-evaluation of the Battle of Britain dismantles this mythical retelling of events. Taking a wider perspective than the much-discussed air war, North takes a fresh look at the conflict as a whole to show that the civilian…
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.
One of the strangest characters of the Nazi regime was Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic German born in Estonia and educated in Latvia.
He was one of Hitler’s closest friends from the 1920s. He is often viewed as the chief ideologue of the Nazi Party. After the War, his personal diary was discovered. It commenced in 1935. His activities before that are insufficiently documented, but important details of what he was doing in 1929 were revealed by Heinrich Pfeifer, who was recruited by Rosenberg to be his personal aide in that year, when Pfeifer was only 24 years old.
Wittman and Kinney have written this important book reporting on what was found in Rosenberg’s revealing diary, and it is a riveting read. To find the private diaries of senior people is most revealing, and very rare. Rosenberg was a weird fellow, but then which Nazi leader wasn’t?
A groundbreaking World War II narrative wrapped in a riveting detective story, The Devil’s Diary investigates the disappearance of a private diary penned by one of Adolf Hitler’s top aides—Alfred Rosenberg, his “chief philosopher”—and mines its long-hidden pages to deliver a fresh, eye-opening account of the Nazi rise to power and the genesis of the Holocaust
An influential figure in Adolf Hitler’s early inner circle from the start, Alfred Rosenberg made his name spreading toxic ideas about the Jews throughout Germany. By the dawn of the Third Reich, he had published a bestselling masterwork that was a touchstone of Nazi…
You know you love an author when you read one of his/her books, then go back and read the rest. Leonard Pitts Jr. is one of those writers. This is the closest you'll come to watching a movie while you're reading a novel.
Could you find the courage to do what's right in a world on fire?
Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.
An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman's life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the same events…
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by…
Spending my childhood in Nazi Germany, the nature and the horrific consequences of Nazi ideology have occupied me as a student of German history and later as a teacher of intellectual and literary history. In 1933 Car Schmitt opted to support the Nazis. While he was banned from the public sohere in post-war Germany, his ideas remained influential on the far right and the far left, fortunately without significantly impacting the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. It was the growing international visibility of Schmitt’s writings that became my personal concern after 2000. In particular, Schmitt’s increasing influence in the United States energized me to reread and respond to his writings.
Are you tired of Hollywood clichés about Nazi culture? The Princeton historian Anson Rabinbach is your man. His brilliant essays on aspects of Nazi culture as diverse as the popular novel under Nazism, the Nazi-organized leisure industry, and the fate of the humanities at German universities between 1933 and 1945, provide the sharp, well-informed analysis you never got at school. Get started with the interview the author gave to two younger colleagues (pp. 450-480); here things become personal. Of course, Rabinbach is a pro, he knows the critical literature on the topic and cites it to differentiate his argument. But more importantly, his insights and arguments force you to rethink your response to German fascism, and to question the facile opposition of democracy and Nazism portrayed in American pop culture.
A widely celebrated intellectual historian of twentieth-century Europe, Anson Rabinbach is one of the most important scholars of National Socialism working over the last forty years. This volume collects, for the first time, his pathbreaking work on Nazi culture, antifascism, and the after-effects of Nazism on postwar German and European culture. Historically detailed and theoretically sophisticated, his essays span the aesthetics of production, messianic and popular claims, the ethos that Nazism demanded of its adherents, the brilliant and sometimes successful efforts of antifascist intellectuals to counter Hitler's rise, the most significant concepts to emerge out of the 1930s and 1940s…
