Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America's First Black Paratroopers

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

Steve Sheinkin · 204 pages

"In San Francisco Bay there was a United States Navy base called Port Chicago. During World War II, it was a busy port where young sailors--many of them teenagers--loaded bombs and ammunition into ships bound for American troops in the Pacific. Like the entire Navy, Port Chicago was strictly segregated. All the officers giving orders were white; all the men loading bombs were black. On July 17

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

William L. Shirer · 1,264 pages

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

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

Hampton Sides · 384 pages

Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

Anna Reid · 512 pages

A gripping, authoritative narrative history of the siege of Leningrad from 1941-1944, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists and memoirists on both sides.

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II

Mitchell Zuckoff · 478 pages

In Nov. 1942 a U.S. cargo plane crashed into the Greenland ice cap, the B-17 sent on the search-and-rescue mission got caught in a storm and also crashed, miraculously all nine men aboard survived. A second rescue operation was launched, but the plane, the Grumman Duck, flew into a storm and vanished. The survivors of the B-17 spent 148 days fighting to stay alive while waiting for rescue by famed

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West

Niall Ferguson · 816 pages

Historian Fergusson provides a revolutionary reinterpretation of the modern era that resolves its central paradox: why unprecedented progress coincided with unprecedented violence, and why the seeming triumph of the West bore the seeds of its undoing. From the conflicts that presaged the First World War to the aftershocks of the Cold War, the twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in all of hu

The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II

Judith M. Heimann · 304 pages

November 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves facing a Japanese fleet--and were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the island's mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these

Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945

Max Hastings · 555 pages

A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston's War captures the full range of Churchill's endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings's Churchill comes brashly to life as never before. Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime mini

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

Rana Mitter · 480 pages

Japan at War: An Oral History

Haruko Taya Cook, Theodore F. Cook · 479 pages

This pathbreaking work of oral history captures for the first time ever - in either Japanese or English - the remarkable story of ordinary Japanese people during World War II. In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese homefront during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses

The Avengers: A Jewish War Story

Rich Cohen · 272 pages

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942

Nigel Hamilton

Hiroshima Nagasaki

Paul Ham · 640 pages

In this harrowing history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Paul Ham argues against the use of nuclear weapons, drawing on extensive research and hundreds of interviews to prove that the bombings had little impact on the eventual outcome of the Pacific War.

Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

Lynne Olson · 576 pages

"When the Nazi Blitzkrieg subjugated Europe in World War II, London became the safe haven for the leaders of seven occupied countries--France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Poland--who fled there to avoid imprisonment and set up governments in exile to commandeer their resistance efforts. The lone hold-out against Hitler's offensive, Britain became a beacon of hope to th

Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II

Vicki Constantine Croke · 343 pages

"At the onset of World War II, [Billy] Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own 'Hannibal Trek,' [becoming] a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them"--

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

Mark Harris · 511 pages

Traces the World War II experiences of five legendary directors including John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra and George Stevens to assess the transformative impact of the war and period beliefs on Hollywood. By the author of Pictures at a Revolution.

The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

Elizabeth Letts · 320 pages

"Traces the lesser-known efforts of Hitler to build a master race of the finest purebred horses and the heroic achievements of American soldiers to rescue imperiled stolen equines from a hidden Czechoslovakian farm during a 1945 battle between Third Reich and Allied forces,"--NoveList. In the chaotic last days of World War II, a small troop of American soldiers captures a German spy and learns th

The Last 100 Days

John Willard Toland · 622 pages

On January 27, 1945, the Russians were only 50 miles from Berlin, and powerful American and British forces were about to smash across the Rhine. Hitler, however, was convinced he could still win the war. "This time," he said, referring bitterly to Germany's "premature" surrender in 1918, "we must not give up at five minutes before midnight!" But 100 days later, the Third Reich lay in ruins and for

81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness

Brian Murphy, Toula Vlahou · 238 pages

"Shortly before Christmas in 1943, five Army aviators left Alaska's Ladd Field on a test flight. Only one ever returned: Leon Crane, a city kid from Philadelphia with little more than a parachute on his back when he bailed from his B-24 Liberator before it crashed into the Arctic. Alone in subzero temperatures, Crane managed to stay alive in the dead of the Yukon winter for nearly twelve weeks and

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two

Allan Berube · 377 pages

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Bérubé examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victim

With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain

Michael Korda · 336 pages

Michael Korda's brilliant work of history takes the reader back to the summer of 1940, when fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force — often no more than nine hundred on any given day — stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp.Korda re-creates the intensity of combat in "the long, delirious, burning blue" of the sky above southern Englan

Five Days That Shocked the World

Nicholas Best · 369 pages

"In the momentous days from April 28 to May 2, 1945, the world witnessed the death of two Fascist dictators and the fall of Berlin. Mussolini's capture and execution by Italian partisans, the suicide of Adolf Hitler, and the fall of the German capital signaled the end of the four-year war in the European Theater. In Five Days That Shocked the World, Nicholas Best thrills readers with the first-per

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940

William R. Trotter · 284 pages

This is a book of battles -- savagely fought, often with great heroism on both sides, under brutal, subarctic conditions. Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses -- these were the elements of Finland's short-lived victory. For all the epic resistance of the Finns, the outcome w