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 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.

By Sid Jacobson

Drawing on the archives and expertise of the Anne Frank House, the best-selling authors of 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation cover the short-but-inspiring life of the famed Jewish teen memoirist, from the lives of her parents to Anne's years keeping her private diary while hidden from the Nazis to her untimely death in a concentration camp.

By Kurt Vonnegut

Armageddon in Retrospect – Kurt Vonnegut Jr. include such pieces as an essay on the destruction of Dresden, a story about the first-meal fantasies of three soldiers, and a meditation on the impossibility of shielding children from the temptations of violence.

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 Keiji Nakazawa

In this graphic depiction of nuclear devastation, three survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima - Gen, his mother, and his baby sister - face rejection, hunger, and humiliation in their search for a place to live.

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 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 Andrew Roberts

Draws on extensive new materials, from private letters to transcripts of war cabinet meetings, to present a portrait of the iconic war leader that discusses Churchill's motivations and unwavering faith in the British Empire.

By Liza Mundy

Documents the pivotal contributions of more than 10,000 American women who served as codebreakers during World War II, detailing how their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives and enabled their subsequent careers, in an account that also reveals the strict practice of secrecy that nearly erased their efforts from history.

By Paul Cornioley

Memoirs of the only female SOE agent to lead a French Resistance network during 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 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 Miranda Mouillot
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

In a love story spanning two continents and three generations, the author journeys to the South of France to uncover the truth about her grandparents’ mysterious engagement after escaping Nazi-occupied France.

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 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 Jennifer Cody Epstein

A young woman’s journey through the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, and the stories of three Americans who shape her fate.

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 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 Eddie Jaku
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

In this uplifting memoir in the vein of The Last Lecture and Man’s Search for Meaning, a Holocaust survivor pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom, and living his best possible life.

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 John Hersey

In this new enlarged edition of his classic account of the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb, Hersey recounts his return to Japan, forty years later and his interviews with six people who were the focus of the earlier book.

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 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 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 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 Selma van de Perre
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

This memoir from a 98–year–old Jewish Resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor tells the story of how she took on an assumed identity fighting Nazi occupation in the Netherlands before being sent to a women’s prison.

By Elie Wiesel
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, November 15, 2016. 7:30 PM.

The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity.

By Bob Dole

The former U.S. Senate Republican leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee recounts his inspirational experiences of serving with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, during which he suffered a dangerous shrapnel wound that resulted in a three-year struggle for survival.

By Margaret Olwen Macmillan

Describes the six months following the end of the First World War when leaders of the great powers, as well as men and women from all over the world, all with their own agendas, converged on Paris to shape the peace.

By Gunter Grass

The Nobel Prize-winning novelist recounts his childhood, youth, and career, including revelations about his service in the Waffen SS combat unit at the end of World War II.

By James M. Scott
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

The definitive history of one of the most brutal campaigns of the war in the Pacific.

By Agnès Humbert

A diary by a key member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of 1940 recounts her group’s betrayal to the Gestapo, her imprisonment and deportation to Germany, and the brutal treatment she and her friends endured in labor camps.

By Ann Hagedorn
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

This gripping true account of an American-born soviet spy in the atom project in World War II follows George Koval, a gifted science student, as he provided the Soviets the information needed to produce the atom bomb years before America.

By Joseph Farris

Compiles the author's letters and sketches that chronicle his experiences fighting in Europe in World War II.

By Bruce Henderson

Drawing on veteran interviews and archival research, an account of the contributions of the German–born Jewish–American soldiers known as the Ritchie Boys describes how they risked their lives to join major combat units and gather crucial intelligence from German POWs.

By William Stevenson

A portrait of World War II British spy Vera Atkins describes her recruitment at the age of twenty-five by a legendary spymaster, her work within Winston Churchill’s covert intelligence agency, and her pivotal work for Allied forces.

By John Nunnley

From war diaries and memoirs come first-person accounts of how the common soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army fared during the Second World War. The focus is on the Burma front, where nearly 200,000 of the 300,000 Japanese troops met their deaths. Their stories tell how they started out eager to conquer a faraway land, and how they came to feel isolated and virtually forgotten, with the constant battering by Allied air superiority and submarine attack.

By William B. Breuer

Using personal interviews, official archives, declassified files, books, and magazine articles among other sources the author recalls the rich tale of espionage, secret missions, sabotage, propaganda, code breaking, and kidnapping that marked the “secret war” of World War II.

By Lauren Hillenbrand
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, October 16.  7:30 PM.

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashes into the Pacific and Lt. Louis Zamperini survives. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, he would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.

By Caroline Moorehead

Relates the story of Le Cambon-sur-Lignon, a small, remote mountain village whose inhabitants banded together to save thousands from the Gestapo during World War II.

By E.B. Sledge
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

A former member of the First Marine Division gives a front-line description of two World War II Pacific campaigns—the bloody campaigns at Peleliu and Okinawa—in which he participated as a teenage soldier.

By Kathryn J. Atwood

These twenty-six stories unfold from across Germany, Poland, Great Britain, the United States, and provide an inspiring reminder of women and girls’ refusal to sit on the sidelines around the world and throughout history.