The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Stephen E. Ambrose · 336 pages

Follows the 101st Airbone as it drops into Normandy on D-Day and fights its way through Europe to the end of World War II.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · 514 pages

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Se

The Pacific

Hugh Ambrose · 508 pages

'The Pacific' describes the extraordinary true stories of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot fighting in the Pacific region during World War II.

Flags of Our Fathers

James D. Bradley, Ron Powers · 379 pages

In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumphs, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that as come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS In February 1945, Am

The Longest Day

Cornelius Ryan · 304 pages

A clear, well-researched, and very readable account of Operation Overlord as told by survivors. Skip the Ambrose book and read this instead.

Enemy At The Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad

William Craig · 457 pages

Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle of WWII, cost the lives of nearly two million men and women. It signaled the beginning of the end for the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler; it foretold the Russian juggernaut that would destroy Berlin and make the Soviet Union a superpower. As Winston Churchill characterized the result of the conflict at Stalingrad: " the hinge of fate had turned." William Craig, aut

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Rick Atkinson · 896 pages

This book is the magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II. It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coali

The Fall of Berlin 1945

Antony Beevor · 489 pages

The Red Army's invasion of Berlin in January 1945 was one of the most terrifying examples of fire and sword in history. Frenzied by terrible memories of Wehrmacht and SS brutality, the Russians wreaked havoc, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and millions more fleeing westward. Drawing upon newly available material from former Soviet files, as well as from German, American, British,

Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission

Hampton Sides · 384 pages

Is Paris Burning?

Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre · 385 pages

**Is Paris Burning?** Is a 1965 book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre telling the story of the Liberation of Paris during the Second World War. The book examines the military and political actions surrounding the events of late August 1944 around Paris and how these events unfolded. The title is taken from the question reportedly asked by Adolf Hitler following his order to destroy the city

First Light

Geoffrey Wellum · 352 pages

"Geoffry Wellum tells the ... true story of his coming of age amid the roaring, tumbling dogfights of the fiercest air war the world has ever seen. It is the story of an idealistic schoolboy who couldn't believe his luck when the RAF agreed to take him on as a 'pupil pilot' at the minimum age of seventeen and a half in 1939. In his fervor to fly, he gave little thought to the coming war"--Jacket.

We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers

Marcus Brotherton

From Marcus Brotherton, co-author of Call of Duty, comes a new collection of untold stories from the Band of Brothers.They were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company. After almost two years of hard training, they parachuted into Normandy on DDay and, later, Operation Market Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration c

If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II, One American Officer's Riveting True Story

George Wilson · 288 pages

first hand account of platoon leader with 4th infantry division from normandy to the siegfried line during last 9 months of the war. describes almost continuous combat from the infantryman's perspective. considered one of the best of its type. prose is unusually excellent for the genre. no false heroics. extremely realistic, holding back no details of the gore and misery of combat.

Night

Elie Wiesel · 126 pages

Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers"

Don Malarkey, Bob Welch · 282 pages

Sgt. Don Malarkey takes us not only into the battles fought from Normandy to Germany, but into the heart and mind of a soldier who beat the odds to become an elite paratrooper, and lost his best friend during the nightmarish engagement at Bastogne. Drafted in 1942, Malarkey became one of the one-in-six soldiers who earned their Eagle wings. He went to England in 1943 to provide cover on the ground

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945

Max Hastings · 640 pages

Armageddon is the epic story of the last eight months of World War II in Europe by Max Hastings--one of Britain's most highly regarded military historians, whose accounts of past battles John Keegan has described as worthy "to stand with that of the best journalists and writers" (New York Times Book Review).In September 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler's army was beaten, and expected that the

The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-45

Paul Fussell · 184 pages

The Boys' Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell's unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman's experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author's own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children--for children they were--who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues

Spitfires

Becky Aikman · 369 pages

The heart-pounding true story of the daring American women who piloted the most dangerous aircraft of World War II through the treacherous skies of Britain.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

William L. Shirer · 1,264 pages

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath

Michael Norman, Elizabeth M. Norman · 463 pages

Following the U.S. surrender to the Japanese on the peninsula of Bataan in 1942, 76,000 American and Filipino POWs began the infamous Death March. This gripping narrative, told in unsparing but sympathetic detail, focuses intermittently on American POW Ben Steele, whose sketches adorn the book, and the hell of Japanese prison and labor camps that introduced these captives to the starvation, dehydr

The Third Reich at War

Richard J. Evans · 926 pages

The final volume in Richard J. Evans's masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the mobilization of a "people's community to serve a war of conquest, and Hitler's campaign of racial subjugation and genocideAlready hailed as "a masterpiece" (William Grimes in The New York Times) and "the most comprehensive history...of the Third Reich" (Ian

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

Eugene B. Sledge · 352 pages

Black Hawk Down

Mark Bowden · 486 pages

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, 3 October 1993, 140 elite US soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a teeming market neighbourhood in the heart of the city of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night in a hostile city,

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan

Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard · 384 pages

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. This book takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, w