The Zanzibar Chest

My War Gone By, I Miss It So

Anthony Loyd · 334 pages

Nothing can prepare you for Anthony Loyd 's portrait of war. It is the story of the unspeakable terror and the visceral, ecstatic thrill of combat, and the lives and dreams laid to waste by the bloodiest conflict that Europe has witnessed since the Second World War. Born into a distinguished military family, Loyd was raised on the stories of his ancestors' exploits and grew up fascinated with war.

God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir

John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney · 295 pages

"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau's harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau's journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres

A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman

Lisa J. Shannon · 336 pages

The Translator

Daoud Hari, Mirron Willis · 215 pages

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Chinua Achebe · 352 pages

Achebe's long-awaited account of coming of age during the defining experience of his life: the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War of 1967-1970.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace

Le Ly Hayslip, Jay Wurts · 368 pages

A Vietnamese girl caught between the North the South and the Americans. Later in life she returns to Vietnam to find her family and continuing distrust and fear. The book goes back and forth between the war years and her return as an American. A great book. One of my favorites.

Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family

Miep Gies, Alison Leslie Gold · 252 pages

For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, here at last is Miep's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims. From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refuge

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza · 215 pages

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other

The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

Wladyslaw Szpilman · 224 pages

A Jewish pianist's real-life account of survival in World War II Warsaw. Separated in a mêlée, he fights to rejoin his family as they board the death train, but police block him. "Papa!" he cries. The father waves, "as if I were setting out into life and he was already greeting me from beyond the grave."

The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom, John Sherrill, Elizabeth Sherrill · 241 pages

The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom by Corrie ten Boom, John Sherrill, Elizabeth Sherrill (Goodreads Author) "At one time Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a story to tell. For the first fifty years of her life nothing at all out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her spinster sister a

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

Jason Stearns · 416 pages

War Child: A Boy Soldier's Story

Emmanuel Jal, Megan Lloyd Davies · 262 pages

In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven-year-old Sudanese boy, living in a small village. But as Sudan's civil war moved closer, his family moved again and again, seeking peace. Then, one terrible day, Jal was separated from his mother, and later learned she had been killed; his father Simon rose to become a powerful commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, fighting for the freedom

The Bite of Mango

Mariatu Kamara, Susan McClelland · 216 pages

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Loung Ung · 256 pages

From a childhood survivor of the Camdodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit. One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in

But You Did Not Come Back

Marceline Loridan-Ivens · 100 pages

An activist and documentary filmmaker, who was arrested in occupied France at the age of fifteen, presents this deeply personal account of her experiences during the Holocaust and the death of her father in a concentration camp that overshadowed her whole life.

Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan

John Bul Dau, Martha Arual Akech · 128 pages

Escape from Auschwitz

Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic · 359 pages

Survivor: Auschwitz, the Death March and my Fight for Freedom

Sam Pivnik · 320 pages

Sam Pivnik is a survivor of a world that no longer exists - on 14 occasions, he should have been killed. On his 13th birthday, the Nazis invaded Poland. He survived two ghettoes and 6 months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampkommando where prisoners were either sent to camp or gassed. After this, he was sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. As the Third Reich collapsed, he was only one o

Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora

Pierre Berg, Brian Brock · 304 pages

"From Pierre Berg's opening words, to his decidedly un-lucky detention by Gestapo officers, all the way through his internment in Drancy, Auschwitz, Dora, and Ravensbrueck, Scheisshaus Luck is a harrowing, clear-eyed testament of one young man's experience of the Holocaust. Originally penned shortly after the war when memories were still fresh, this autobiographical account of a Gentile French tee

I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb · 311 pages

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous re

Commandant Of Auschwitz

Rudolf Hoss, Primo Levi · 281 pages

Rudolf Hoess was the notorious Commandant of Auschwitz. Imprisoned and awaiting execution after the war, Hoess wrote a long memoir, a self-serving account of his life and approaches to management. The amoral sensibility Hoess displayed regarding all that went on in the charnel factory where the industrialization of death was practiced--where probably 3 million people were literally worked to death

Because of Romek: A Holocaust Survivor's Memoir

David Faber, Anna Vaisman · 214 pages

Forest of the Gods

Balys Sruoga · 339 pages

The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir

Benjamin Jacobs · 239 pages

This book is unique among Holocaust memoirs. It is the story of Berek Jakubowicz (now Benjamin Jacobs), a Jewish dental student who in 1941 was deported from his Polish Village to a Nazi labor camp and remained a prisoner of the Reich until the last days of the war. Shunted between labor camps and concentration camps by cattle car and forced marches, Jakubowicz was interned in Buchenwald and Dora