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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