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 Joseph Kelly

An account of the two hundred-year practice of slavery in Charleston examines its hotly contested debates and early slave rebellions through the Nullification crisis and the secession that sparked the Civil War.

By Brian Kilmeade
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

A portrait of the seventh American president focuses on his formative military prowess during the War of 1812 and his pivotal contributions to the capturing of New Orleans from the British.

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 Rick Atkinson

The first volume in a three volume work about the liberation of Europe opens in North Africa in 1942 and charts America's rise to world-power status by its involvement in a war on two fronts.

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 Peter Englund

A narrative history of World War I explores its impact on everyday men and women, drawing on diaries and letters by twenty individuals from various countries to present an international mosaic of perspectives.

By Jeremy Scahill

Explores the private security company Blackwater USA, including the background of its founder; its relationship with the United States government; and its role in the Iraq War, the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina, and the War on Terror.

By Greg Campbell

An expose of international diamond smuggling operations considers the rebel campaigns linked to the Sierra Leone diamond mines and how the area and its people have been destroyed by the industry's policies.

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 Philip James McFarland

A novelist and historian traces both sides of the early conflicts of the American Revolution through the intertwined lives of three native Bostonians during the turbulent year preceding the Revolution. Thomas Hutchinson, the last civilian governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stands as the centerpiece of the story. Two other key figures are profiled: Josiah Quincy, an archpatriot and enemy of Hutchinson's loyalism, and Benjamin Franklin, the diplomat and scientist who fought to hold the British Empire together before conceding to declare himself an American. For general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

By Richard Miles
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“A history of the city whose defeat was one of the ancient world's defining moments draws on new archaeological research to trace its rise to become the Mediterranean's greatest sea power and discuss the contributions of military leader Hannibal (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 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 Erik Larson
With Barney Levantino, Reference Librarian

Tuesday, December 8, 2015. 7:30 PM.

A chronicle of the sinking of the Lusitania discusses the factors that led to the tragedy and the contributions of such figures as Woodrow Wilson, bookseller Charles Lauriat, and architect Theodate Pope Riddle.

By Bana Al Abed
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

A full-length account of the young Twitter activist's harrowing experiences in war-torn Siberia describes how her home was decimated by bombings and dwindling supplies before her family embarked on a perilous escape to Turkey.

By James F. Dunnigan

A military advisor presents a history of weapons from ancient history to the present and posits that the Pentagon's present preoccupation with high-tech weapons is weakening America's military might.

By Fredrik Logevall

A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.

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 John Keegan

Chronicles the events of the conflict from early diplomatic efforts to avert war, through the nightmarish campaigns and battles, to the end of the war and its repercussions.

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 Joe Sacco

Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front trash–strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident in 1956 that left 111 Palestinians dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah––cold–blooded massacre or dreadful mistake––reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, Footnotes in Gaza captures the essence of a tragedy.

By Julius Caesar

The Gallic War, published on the eve of the civil war which led to the end of the Roman Republic, is an autobiographical account written by one of the most famous figures of European history.

By Brian Kilmeade
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian

“Shares the true story of an anonymous group of spies who played important roles in winning the Revolutionary War, documenting how they risked their lives to obtain crucial intelligence for General Washington using sophisticated tactics and complex codes (From the Publisher).”

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 David Finkel

Relates the author's experiences as an embedded reporter with Battalion 2-16. telling the story of the surge from the perspective of the someone who worked the soldiers every day.

By Robert Graves

Robert Graves records the events of his life up to the age of thirty-three when he left his native land for Majorca.

By Bill Berkeley

A gripping introduction to the political turmoil in Africa dispels the myth that ancient tribal hatred lies at the heart of the continent’s troubles by focusing on the tyrants and military leaders responsible for war and brutality.

By Barbara Wertheim Tuchman

A definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning re-creation of the Powderkeg that was Europe during the crucial first thirty days of World War I traces the actions of statesmen and patriots alike in Berlin, London, St. Petersburg, and Paris.

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 Candice Millard
Recommended By Betty T., Graphic Artist, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

Presents a narrative account of Churchill’s heroics during the Boer War, describing his daring escape from rebel captors, trek through hundreds of miles with virtually no supplies, and eventual return to South Africa to liberate the soldiers captured with him.

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 Joseph J. Ellis
Recommended By Barry Ernst, Reference Librarian

“Ellis does an excellent job of infusing a sometimes remote national icon with breath and life, so that readers are able to see the human Washington operating in his tumultuous period of history while towering above it-no mean authorial feat (From School Library Journal).”

By George Orwell

In 1936 Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s experiences.

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 Eric L. Haney

Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, provides an inside look at the elite counterterrorist unit, explaining the process by which men are selected for the unit, and telling of his personal experiences with Delta Force in Beirut, Tehran, Honduras, and other hot spots throughtout the world.

Became the TV show: The Unit.