World War II Past Readings
2023
- Walter Ford Carter, No Greater Sacrifice, No Greater Love
- Virginia Cowles, Looking For Trouble
- Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-day June 6, 1944
- Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia
- Michael Neiberg, When France Fell: the Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance
- Srinath Raghaven, India’s War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia
- E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939
- Philip Ziegler, Between the Wars: 1919–1939
- Gordon Corera, Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe
- E.B Sledge, With the Old Breed
- Richard J. Overy, The Air War, 1939–1945
2022
- Michael Paradis, Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice
- Jeremy Black, A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps
- Meredith Hindley, Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II
- Frank Sisson with Robert L. Wise, I Marched With Patton: A Firsthand Account of World War II Alongside One of the U.S Army’s Greatest Generals
- Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far
- Vesa Nenye, Peter Munter, Toni Wirtanen, Chris Birks, Finland at War: The Continuation and Lapland Wars 1941–45
- Victor Davis Hanson, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
- Peter Clark, Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight
- Victor Davis Hanson, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
- Peter Clark, Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight
- Charles R. Gallagher, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front
- Chester Nez, Code Talker
- Sean McMeekin, Stalin’s War: A New History of WWII
2021
- Michael Neiberg, Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe
- Tim Bouverie, Appeasement
- John J. Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor
- Gordon Thomas & Greg Lewis, Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule
- Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power January 1933
- Telford Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir
- Thomas Childers, Soldier From the War Returning: The Greatest Generation’s Troubled Homecoming from World War II
- Tim Bouverie, Appeasement
- Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission
- Jim Bishop, FDR’s Last Year
- Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
- Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II
2020
- Mark Stoler, George C. Marshall
- Craig Symonds, WWII at Sea: A Global History
- Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance
- Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present
- Allen Packwood, How Churchill Waged War: The Most Challenging Decisions of the Second World War
- Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
- Steven Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America
- John Bunker, Heroes in Dungarees: The Story of the American Merchant Marine in World War II
- Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Brothers in Arms
- Craig Nelson, Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness
2019
- Aldolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Manheim’s 1943 translation
- Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Battles of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery
- David King, The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany
- Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
- William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War
- Susan Dunn, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm
- Mark Ryan, The Hornet’s Sting: The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum
- Mary Jo McConahay, The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America During World War II
- James Q. Wilson, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
- Linda Hervieux, Forgotten
- Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: 20th Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
- Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951
- Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich
2018
- Taylor Downing, Spies in The Sky: The Secret Battle for Ariel Intelligence During World War II
- Irmgard A. Hunt, On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcomming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- Jonathan Dimbleby, Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War
- James D. Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno
- Joseph Springer, Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in WWII
- Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge
- Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust
2017
- Charles Kaiser, The Cost of Courage
- David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War
- R.D. Rosen, Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocausts Hidden Child Survivors
- Francois Kersaudy, Norway 1940
- Angelo Codivilla, Between the Alps and a Hard Place
- Ben Macyntire, Double Cross
- Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors-Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany 1941–1945
- Longerrich & Bance, Goebbels: A Biography
- Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940–1942
2016
- Anonymous, A Woman In Berlin
- Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain
- John Lukacs, The Legacy of the Second World War
- Werner A. Herbert, Iron Coffins
- Stanley G. Payne and Jesus Palacios, Franco: A Personal and Political Biography
- Robert Klara, FDR’S Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance
- Charles Kaiser, The Cost of Courage
2015
- Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle
- Timothy D. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
- Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
- Dan McMillan, How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust
- Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide
- David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945
- Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945
2014
- Michael Korda, With Wings like Eagles
- Ben MacIntyre, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal
- Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (The Second World War)
- Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches(other title: Escape to Adventures)
- Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: Life of Heydrich
- Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods
- S.M Plokhy, Yalta: The Price of Peace
2013
- Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken
- Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
- Ronald H. Spector, In the Ruins of Empire
- Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food
- Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
- Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
- Lynn Olson, Citizens of London; Michael McKernan, Defending the Home front in World War II
2012
- Ronald Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan
- rank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph, 1942-45
- Brian Garfield, The Thousand-mile war: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians
- John Dower, War Without Mercy
- Stuart D. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army’s Victory that Shaped World War II
- Craig L. Symonds, The Battle of Midway
- Arthur Herman, Freedom Forge
2011
- Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat
- Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking
- Haruo Tohmatsu and H.P. Wilmott, A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921-1942
- Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China
- Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China
- Walter Lord, Day of Infamy
- Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor
- Peter Mersky, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo
- Alistair Cooke, The American Home Front 1941-1942
2010
- Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
- David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk
- Charles Glass, Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation, 1940-1944
- Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier
- Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
- Walter Ford Carter, No Greater Sacrifice, No Greater Love: A Son’s Journey to Normandy
2009
- Fitzroy MacLean, The Heretic: The Life and Times of Josip Broz-Tito by
- Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941 – 44
- Charles R. Gallagher, Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII
- Richard Overy, Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet Effort,1941-1945
- John Lucaks, Hitler and Stalin
- Rodric Braithwaite, Moscow 1941: A City and its People at War
- Russell H.S. Stolfi, Hitler’s Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted
- Constantine Pleshakov, Stalin’s Folly: The Secret History of the German Invasion of Russia, June 1941
- Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
2008
- Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won
- Rick Atkinson , The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943
- Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience
- Nicholas W. Bethel, The War Hitler Won: The Fall of Poland, September, 1939
- William Trotter, A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940
- Tom Schachtman, The Phony War, 1939-1940
- Allen Chew, The White Death
2007
- Philip Gerard, Secret Soldiers
- J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini
- John Lukacs, The Last European War
- Iris Origo, War in the Val d’Orcia
- Ken Burns, “The War” (WWII Documentary)
2006
- Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
- James Bradley, Flyboys
- E.B.Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa
- D.K. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time
- Paul Carell, The Foxes of the Desert
- Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War, With the Red Army, 1941-1945
- Marcus Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger
- Philip Gerard, Secret Soldiers
- Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn
2005
- Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers
- Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Last Boat from Bordeaux War Memoirs of Francis de Marneffe
- Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar
- Margaret McMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
- John Toland, Rising Sun
- William Manchester, American Caesar [Douglas MacArthur]
2004
- Origins of the Second World War by A.J. P. Taylor
- Hitler by Joachim C. Fest