First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Night

Elie Wiesel · 126 pages

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."

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah · 234 pages

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s). Beah was 12 years old when he fled his village after it was attacked by rebels, and he wandered the war-filled country until brainwashed by an army unit that forced him to u

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Philip Gourevitch · 355 pages

An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable debut book chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech--largely by machete--it was carried out at shoc

Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur

Halima Bashir, Damien Lewis · 352 pages

Like the single white eyelash that graces her row of dark lashes--seen by her people as a mark of good fortune--Halima Bashir's story stands out. Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor's tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and the uncompromising spirit of a young woman who refused to be silenced.Born into the Z

Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi · 157 pages

In 1943, Primo Levi, a 25-year-old chemist and "Italian citizen of Jewish race," was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. This is Levi's classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remain

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.

The Complete Maus

Art Spiegelman · 296 pages

The definitive edition of the graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker) • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • One of Variety’s “Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read”A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever writte

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Marjane Satrapi · 160 pages

Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and

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

The Poppy War

R.F. Kuang · 545 pages

Winner of the Reddit Fantasy Award for Best Debut 2018 ‘The best fantasy debut of 2018’ – WIRED

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

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10

Marcus Luttrell · 390 pages

On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire t

Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally · 429 pages

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mer

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · 236 pages

This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the s

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

Mila 18

Leon Uris · 539 pages

An historical novel about the Jewish Resistance fighters who took on the might of the Nazis in German occupied Warsaw during WW2. As the Jewish ghetto gradually shrinks and becomes cut off from the outside world a handful of its residents take up arms to maintain their freedom and their dignity in a struggle they know cannot be won.

The Bite of Mango

Mariatu Kamara, Susan McClelland · 216 pages

The Yellow Birds

Kevin Powers · 240 pages

In this haunting fictional account, an Iraq war veteran contemplates the lives, including his own, devasated by the random violence of war.

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

William L. Shirer · 1,264 pages

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Romeo Dallaire · 562 pages

A Canadian general and former United Nations peacekeeper shares his harrowing eyewitness account of the genocide in Rwanda, revealing how he and his men managed to rescue thousands of people despite the orgy of bloodletting that was erupting all around them. Reprint

The Rape of Nanking

Iris Chang · 304 pages

In December 1937, in what was then the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (Nanjing) and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured, and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity - on

What Is the What

Dave Eggers · 475 pages

*What Is the What* is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children--the so-called Lost Boys--was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the Un