By Steve Pressman

Based on the HBO documentary, a true story of personal courage and heroism follows one Jewish American couple as they risked their own lives to travel to Nazi-controlled Vienna and Berlin to rescue fifty Jewish children.

By Art Shaw
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

A 75th–anniversary account of the Battle of Okinawa is told from the first–person perspective of a Bronze Star hero and commander of the Deadeyes unit, which played a crucial role in the surrender of Japanese forces.

By Heather Dune Macadam
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

The acclaimed internationally best-selling author of Rena's Promise reveals the poignant stories of the 999 women on the first official transport to Auschwitz, drawing on extensive interviews with survivors, and consulting with historians, witnesses and relatives of those first deportees.

By Helen Fremont

The author tells how she discovered that her parents were Jews who survived the Holocaust and explores the elaborate deceptions her parents concocted to preserve her and her sister.

By Donald Stratton
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

A memoir by a USS Arizona survivor describes his experience of the attacks that left him with burns over more than sixty-five percent of his body, his resolve to reenter service after a grueling recovery, and his contributions to some of the Pacific's most violent battles.

A companion work to a PBS series contains more than three hundred photographs, profiles of noteworthy personalities, and quotations from the newspapers, magazines, and people who were a part of the 1940s.

By Charles Glass

Analyzes the American expatriate experience in Nazi-occupied Paris, drawing on the personal writings and correspondences of a range of individuals to reveal the challenges they faced and the risks many took to support the Resistance.

By Anne Frank
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, March 10, 2020. 7:30 PM.

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of Anne Frank's death

Teens Welcome

The autobiographical reminiscences of a young Jewish girl coming of age during World War II describes her life in hiding from the Nazis and offers a poignant study of the tragedy of the Holocaust.

By Alex Kershaw

Documents the story of American doctor Sumner Jackson in Nazi-occupied Paris and his life-risking espionage contributions to the French resistance during World War II.

By Stephen E. Ambrose

A look at the exploits of the men of E Company during World War II describes how they parachuted into France early D-Day morning, parachuted into Holland during the Arnhem campaign, and captured Hitler's Bavarian outpost.

Became the TV mini-series: Band of Brothers.

By Hannah Rothschild

A biography of the author's great-aunt, jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter, draws on family records to examine the traditions that shaped her youth.

By Timothy Snyder
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“Describes how fourteen million people were murdered by Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes in the area between Germany and Russia during the time when both men were in power and examines the motives and methods behind the mass murders (From the Publisher).”

By Catherine Bailey
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

The best-selling author of The Secret Rooms documents the experiences of ambassador’s daughter Fey von Hassell, whose family made the brave decision to forfeit their privileged existences to resist the Nazis during the occupation of northern Italy.

By Eric Lamet
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

When the author was seven, his family’s middle-class Viennese existence was shattered by the Nazi seizure of Austria. His father fled to Poland, where he presumably perished in a death camp. Lamet and his mother made a harrowing escape to Italy, where they spent months seeking refuge in various isolated mountain villages.

By Clara Kramer

An account based on the author's personal record of the months during which she hid from Nazis in an underground bunker with seventeen others discusses the characteristics of their unlikely protector and the house fire that threatened everyone's survival.

By Clara Kramer
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“This heart-stopping story of a young girl hiding from the Nazis is based on Clara Kramer's diary of her years surviving in an underground bunker with seventeen other people (From the Publisher).”

By Paul Cornioley

Memoirs of the only female SOE agent to lead a French Resistance network during World War II.

By Sarah Rose
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian, Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

The dramatic, inspiring story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to sabotage the Nazis, shore up the Resistance, and pave the way for Allied victory in World War II.

By Stephen E. Ambrose

Chronicles the events, politics, and personalities of this pivotal day in World War II, shedding light on the strategies of commanders on both sides and the ramifications of the battle.

By Craig Shirley

Traces, day-by-day, the most important 31 days in the history of America’s participation in World War II, which snuffed out the lives of millions and changed history forever.

By Ben Macintyre

Recounts the story of the six double agents--Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo, who would weave a web of deception so intricate that it ensnared Hitler's army and helped to carry thousands of troops across the Channel in safety on 6 June 1944, D-Day.

By Alex Kershaw

The epic and heroic story of how Raoul Wallenberg out-dueled Adolph Eichmann and saved more than 100,000 Jews in Budapest from the Nazi death camps.

By Julian Jackson

This book charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies. Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries to bring the story to life, Jackson recreates the intense atmosphere of the six weeks in May and June leading up to the establishment of the Vichy regime.

By Robert Gildea

A penetrating history of France during World War II sweeps aside the French Resistance of a thousand clichés. Gaining a true understanding of the Resistance means recognizing how its image has been carefully curated through a combination of French politics and pride, ever since jubilant crowds celebrated Paris’s liberation in 1944.

By James Bradley

A chilling true story of World War II describes the story of eight young American airmen who were shot down over Chichi Jima, one of whom was rescued by an American submarine and went on to become president of the United States, and the other seven who were captured by Japanese troops and whose fate has remained a secret for nearly sixty years.

By Edward Dolnick

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter, Han van Meegeren, who dared to impersonate Vermeer centuries later.

By Joseph E. Persico

Non-fiction account examining Franklin Delano Roosevelt's relationships with the women around him.

By Krystyna Chiger
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“Chiger's exceptional story of a small Jewish girl stands out among the many Holocaust survival narratives as one that will touch the hearts of teens and adults alike and bring home the horrors of this very dark period in history (School Library Journal Review).”

By Denise Kiernan

Looks at the valuable contributions made by the thousands of women who worked at a secret uranium-enriching facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II.

By Roald Dahl

As a young man working in East Africa for the Shell Company, Roald Dahl recounts his adventures living in the jungle and later flying a fighter plane in World War II.

By Richard Schickel

World War II-era Hollywood showed us fantastic possibilities and made them plausible, but in so doing it profoundly misled us about the nature of the war, our soldiers, our government, and the home front. The author, a film critic and biographer, sets the record straight about that view of the war, and he does it by illuminating the meaning of wartime films set against the background of his own growing up.

By Peter Grose

The untold story of an isolated French community that banded together to offer sanctuary and shelter to over 3,500 Jews in the throes of World War II.

By Stephen Walker

Relates the true story of the Catholic priest who helped hide and shelter Jews during World War II, the Nazi officer who wished him dead, and their relationship after the war ended.

By Tilar J. Mazzeo

Taking readers behind the doors of Paris's Hotel Ritz during the Nazi occupation of World War II, this extraordinary chronicle reveals a hotbed of illicit affairs, deadly intrigues, courageous acts of defiance and treachery and the people and events that made this opulent cultural landmark legendary.

By Doug Stanton

“The definitive account of this harrowing chapter of World War II history-- In Harm’s Way is a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage (From the Publisher).”

By Erik Larson
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director, Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Wednesday, June 6, 2012.  7:30 PM. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, during Hitler's rise to power, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

By Max Hastings

Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people, of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, the author provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war.

By Albert Speer

The author presents a detailed account of his fifteen-year association with the German Fuhrer. A painstaking and plainspeaking record by a man whose memories of the Hitler years still reflect "the enthusiasms and the glory of my youth as well as belated horror and guilt."

By Rebecca Franke
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The inspiring story of a Polish family who narrowly escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to the Bialowieza Forest, surviving two years of brutal winters, disease and Nazi raids until their 1944 rescue by the Red Army.

By Elizabeth Bettina
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Take a journey with the author as she discovers much to her surprise, that her grandparent's small village, nestled in the heart of southern Italy, housed an internment camp for Jews during the Holocaust, and that it was far from the only one.

By Wendy Ng

Collects sources of information regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, including personal essays, photographs, and biographies of the major figures involved.

By Greg Dawson

Documents the little-known story of the Kharkov Trials that sought justice for thousands of Jews killed in the Ukraine two years before the Nuremberg Trials, tracing the author's visit to the peaceful city where his grandparents and great-grandparents were killed.

By Bill O'Reilly

Presents an account of General George Patton's leadership during the final months of World War II in Europe, and the events surrounding his mysterious death.

By Anna Reid
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

A narrative account of the siege of Leningrad reveals the Nazi decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and related Soviet leadership failures, describing the harrowing experiences of residents within the blockaded city.

By Sarah Helm

Describes the life and espionage career of Vera Atkins, a talented agent who rose to the top of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British secret service dedicated to aiding resistance efforts throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, focusing on her personal quest to uncover the fate of twelve female agents who vanished during the war.

By Lara Feigel

As poetic as it is enlightening this detailed biography of five literary figures is achingly beautiful in its depiction of the disturbing everyday realities of war.

By Ronnie Carroll

A powerful memoir about the harrowing effects of war on a troubled Irish family.

By Robert M. Edsel

Traces the lesser-known effort by an Allied division to find and secure European art that had been looted by the Nazis, outlining the dramatic story of how they risked their lives and raced against time with limited supplies and scraps of information, sometimes obtained from colorful sources.

Became the movie: The Monuments Men.

By Michael Burleigh

Examines the Second World War in terms of the moral and ethical decisions made by the leaders of both sides and their consequences, including the effects it had on the civilian populations in both theaters.

By Jennifer Teege
Recommended By Alisa Fogel, Librarian-Programming

A German-Nigerian woman discovers, while examining a library book, that her grandfather, Amon Goeth, was portrayed in Schindler’s List as the central villain of the Plaszów concentration camp, responsible for brutally murdering thousands of people.