I blame all the people in the BoB rewatchSince its the Holidays and as such, we've all got some free time/disposable income how about a rec post on some of our favorite WWII/War-themed books
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Okay, I'm not half as well-read in terms of military non-fiction as some of you guys, but there's a few things I can think to recommend:
D-Day by Antony Beevor is a critically acclaimed and very readable overview of D-Day and the Normandy campaign, which covers it from just about every perspective possible: the Americans, the Brits, the Canadians, the Germans, and the French (both army and civilians). It's stuffed full of interesting little details and asides. Also, as a BoB fan of predictable tastes, I really liked getting to read about the Battle of Bloody Gulch (the battle where Harry Welsh blew up that tank) from the German side of things. Beevors' book on Stalingrad is apparently also excellent, though I haven't had the chance to read it yet.
Tail-End Charlies by John Nichols and Toby Rennell - it's been a while since I read this but I remember racing through it at the same time as I watched BoB for the very first time, and the sheer culmination of wartime drama putting me in a strange state of mind
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Charley's War by Pat Mills is pretty much a legendary work of British comics. It was a rare anti-war story in the otherwise rather gung-ho kids' war comic Battle, showing the horrors and injustices of WWI through the eyes of ordinary 16-year-old, Charley Bourne. Pat Mills isn't a subtle writer by any means, and some of it can be heavy-handed and obvious, but the plot clips along at an amazing pace (which comes of the story being a four-pages-a-week serial) and the narrative tension rarely drops. There are some fantastic set pieces, and the art is amazingly detailed.
Going Solo by Roald Dahl - I haven't read this since I was a child, but I remember adoring it and devouring it in a couple of sittings; it was certainly a major contributing factor to my juvenile obsession with WWII. The second half of the author's memoirs, it mostly focusses on his time as an RAF fighter pilot stationed in Greece. His descriptions of the experience of flight and aerial combat are just amazing.
Journey's End is something I so wanted to see in the vaunted Broadway production from a couple of years ago with Hugh Dancy and Stark Sands. It was so well-reviewed. I think I shall read the play. And just act it out in my living room.
Ha, that's pretty much how we did it at school, until we finally got to London to see it on stage. I believe there's been a couple of films done which are probably available by the usual channels - one made in 1930, and a TV movie from 1988. (Wikipedia tells me there's also Aces High, a 1976 film based on Journey's End but which for some reason transposes the setting to the Royal Flying Corps. I've got to track that one down.)
Anyway, I'm awfully fond of it. I mean, it does have exchanges like this:
MASON - Will you have a nice cup of tea, sir?
STANHOPE - Can you guarantee it's nice?
MASON - Well sir - it's a bit oniony, but that's only because of the saucepan.
STANHOPE - In other words, it's onion soup with tea-leaves in it?
MASON - Not till dinner-time, sir.
(Oh yes, that's possibly the other thing to mention. It's utterly, gratuitously British. Stiff upper lips, endless deadpan understatement, and public school nostalgia all over the place.)
A wonderfully exciting book that also will introduce European and American readers to the Philippine campaign is Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides, telling the story of the Great Raid that freed the POWs of Cabanatuan Prison during the American invasion of Japanese-occupied Luzon. Unlike the book The Great Raid it focuses a lot on the prisoners and the horrible circumstances of their captivity starting from the fall of Manila, through the hopeless Battle of Bataan, through the Death March and on until rescue. On the rescue side it's got a rollicking and tense real-life adventure with amazing real characters like Captain Robert Prince, commander of the company of untested Rangers, and his battles and friendship with his flamboyant regimental commander, Colonel Henry Mucci. It's a great read.
Another story from the Philippines that might interest you is We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman (who with her husband has written the recent Bataan POW epic Tears in the Darkness). It's the story of the nurses who served at Bataan and
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I'm actually going to have to add We Band of Angles to my reading list asap, I've only ever heard of the Filipinos' struggles in Bataan because of my family which admittedly were biased. I'd love to read more about the other people who had to suffer as well, I'm really curious about these nurses since I've heard little about other people besides Soldiers.
(I hope the links work, I'm basically html illiterate XD)
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings is a great overview of what happened after the Allied forces invaded France in 1944. It balances switching back and forth between the Western and Eastern fronts, and makes a good argument for why "Berlin by Christmas" failed. Hastings has written other books on WWII, notably about the D-Day invasion, but I haven't had a chance to read that one yet.
Richard Evan's trilogy about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany (The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War) is epic in length, but it's exhaustive and I think does a good job of really explaining the appeal of Hitler and the Nazi party for Germans after the First World War.
If you're interested in French literature from the period, The Silence of the Sea by Vercors and Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano are good reads. I've heard good things about Suite Française, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet
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I'll more than likely be borrowing Silence of the Sea because I'd love to hear more about the French Resistance, and this book sounds amazing.
I'm kind of curious about Richard Evan's trilogy, only since I've heard it mentioned before, I'll have to add that on my list of things to check out as well.
I used one of those online code generators (the interwebs are amazing), so I can't really take any credit but I'm glad everything works.
If you're interested in French history of the period, and allow me to make a few more suggestions (and out myself as a history major):
Louis Calaferte's C'est la Guerre is a novel similar to The Silence of the Sea, and as equally well read in France. There's been a lot of recent scholarship done on the Resistance (Matthew Cobb, The Resistance) and most historians recognize a general historiographical shift away from the conception that there were far greater numbers of resistants vs. collaborateurs, and that the Resistance and de Gaulle had the same goals for France.
While it's great to start with the French Resistance, I think Vichy France is endlessly fascinating. Especially books and movies that got past the Nazi censors. Jean Anouilh's Antigone is a classic. And particularly close to my heart is the case of Alsace, which was annexed like Austria after the defeat of France in 1940. Tomi
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I'm so sorry I'm late to this comment, college just ugh. But thank you for all these recs, I've only ever really heard of bits and pieces of the French Resistance, barely anything mentioned besides that they were around in my survey class. I'm actually really intrested to learn more about how life was like under the Vichy, and more about Alsace, which was literally just a footnote in one of my text books.
I really can't thank you enough for these, Tomi and The Resistance in particular. I know Amazon is already going to be very acquainted with me soon enough right as soon as winter break hits.
And ahaha, that's what the library's for? Though urgh, my local library didn't have Sledge's book or any of Leckie's except for like one audio book. I didn't check the Uni one but lol you get what I mean.
That book is on my list and it won't be moved because I feel like I missed out on Runner/Chuckler bromance and I want to read it straight from the source.
Comments 35
D-Day by Antony Beevor is a critically acclaimed and very readable overview of D-Day and the Normandy campaign, which covers it from just about every perspective possible: the Americans, the Brits, the Canadians, the Germans, and the French (both army and civilians). It's stuffed full of interesting little details and asides. Also, as a BoB fan of predictable tastes, I really liked getting to read about the Battle of Bloody Gulch (the battle where Harry Welsh blew up that tank) from the German side of things.
Beevors' book on Stalingrad is apparently also excellent, though I haven't had the chance to read it yet.
Tail-End Charlies by John Nichols and Toby Rennell - it's been a while since I read this but I remember racing through it at the same time as I watched BoB for the very first time, and the sheer culmination of wartime drama putting me in a strange state of mind ( ... )
Reply
Charley's War by Pat Mills is pretty much a legendary work of British comics. It was a rare anti-war story in the otherwise rather gung-ho kids' war comic Battle, showing the horrors and injustices of WWI through the eyes of ordinary 16-year-old, Charley Bourne.
Pat Mills isn't a subtle writer by any means, and some of it can be heavy-handed and obvious, but the plot clips along at an amazing pace (which comes of the story being a four-pages-a-week serial) and the narrative tension rarely drops. There are some fantastic set pieces, and the art is amazingly detailed.
Going Solo by Roald Dahl - I haven't read this since I was a child, but I remember adoring it and devouring it in a couple of sittings; it was certainly a major contributing factor to my juvenile obsession with WWII. The second half of the author's memoirs, it mostly focusses on his time as an RAF fighter pilot stationed in Greece. His descriptions of the experience of flight and aerial combat are just amazing.
Journey's End by RC ( ... )
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Anyway, I'm awfully fond of it. I mean, it does have exchanges like this:
MASON - Will you have a nice cup of tea, sir?
STANHOPE - Can you guarantee it's nice?
MASON - Well sir - it's a bit oniony, but that's only because of the saucepan.
STANHOPE - In other words, it's onion soup with tea-leaves in it?
MASON - Not till dinner-time, sir.
(Oh yes, that's possibly the other thing to mention. It's utterly, gratuitously British. Stiff upper lips, endless deadpan understatement, and public school nostalgia all over the place.)
Reply
A wonderfully exciting book that also will introduce European and American readers to the Philippine campaign is Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides, telling the story of the Great Raid that freed the POWs of Cabanatuan Prison during the American invasion of Japanese-occupied Luzon. Unlike the book The Great Raid it focuses a lot on the prisoners and the horrible circumstances of their captivity starting from the fall of Manila, through the hopeless Battle of Bataan, through the Death March and on until rescue. On the rescue side it's got a rollicking and tense real-life adventure with amazing real characters like Captain Robert Prince, commander of the company of untested Rangers, and his battles and friendship with his flamboyant regimental commander, Colonel Henry Mucci. It's a great read.
Another story from the Philippines that might interest you is We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman (who with her husband has written the recent Bataan POW epic Tears in the Darkness). It's the story of the nurses who served at Bataan and ( ... )
Reply
Thanks for the rec!
Reply
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings is a great overview of what happened after the Allied forces invaded France in 1944. It balances switching back and forth between the Western and Eastern fronts, and makes a good argument for why "Berlin by Christmas" failed. Hastings has written other books on WWII, notably about the D-Day invasion, but I haven't had a chance to read that one yet.
Richard Evan's trilogy about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany (The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War) is epic in length, but it's exhaustive and I think does a good job of really explaining the appeal of Hitler and the Nazi party for Germans after the First World War.
If you're interested in French literature from the period, The Silence of the Sea by Vercors and Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano are good reads. I've heard good things about Suite Française, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet ( ... )
Reply
I'll more than likely be borrowing Silence of the Sea because I'd love to hear more about the French Resistance, and this book sounds amazing.
I'm kind of curious about Richard Evan's trilogy, only since I've heard it mentioned before, I'll have to add that on my list of things to check out as well.
Reply
If you're interested in French history of the period, and allow me to make a few more suggestions (and out myself as a history major):
Louis Calaferte's C'est la Guerre is a novel similar to The Silence of the Sea, and as equally well read in France. There's been a lot of recent scholarship done on the Resistance (Matthew Cobb, The Resistance) and most historians recognize a general historiographical shift away from the conception that there were far greater numbers of resistants vs. collaborateurs, and that the Resistance and de Gaulle had the same goals for France.
While it's great to start with the French Resistance, I think Vichy France is endlessly fascinating. Especially books and movies that got past the Nazi censors. Jean Anouilh's Antigone is a classic. And particularly close to my heart is the case of Alsace, which was annexed like Austria after the defeat of France in 1940. Tomi ( ... )
Reply
I really can't thank you enough for these, Tomi and The Resistance in particular. I know Amazon is already going to be very acquainted with me soon enough right as soon as winter break hits.
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There are so many books I am desperate to read but I have been a poor student with no time all year :(
However, I did read Helmet for my Pillow and I'm going to rec the shit out of it because god, I love that book ♥
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And ahaha, that's what the library's for? Though urgh, my local library didn't have Sledge's book or any of Leckie's except for like one audio book. I didn't check the Uni one but lol you get what I mean.
That book is on my list and it won't be moved because I feel like I missed out on Runner/Chuckler bromance and I want to read it straight from the source.
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