Best of
War

1938

Address Unknown


Kathrine Kressmann Taylor - 1938
    Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe. A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous and enduring impact.

The Thirty Years War


C.V. Wedgwood - 1938
    After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with similar abandon and relentless persistence, destroying European powers from Spain to Sweden as they marched on the contested soil of Germany. Fanatics, speculators, and ordinary people found themselves trapped in a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction. The Thirty Years War was a turning point in the making of modern Europe and the modern world: out of it came the system of nation-states that remains fundamental to international law. C.V. Wedgwood's magisterial book is the only comprehensive account of the war in English, as well as a triumph of scholarship and literature. Includes maps and charts.

Homage to Catalonia


George Orwell - 1938
    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

Iron Gustav: A Berlin Family Chronicle


Hans Fallada - 1938
    Meanwhile, the First World War is destroying his career, his country and his pride in the German people. As Germany and the Hackendahl family unravel, Gustav has to learn to compromise if he is to hold onto anything he holds dear. Iron Gustav is both a moving, realist account of the aftermath of the First World War, and a deeply involving story of a family in crisis. Yet running through the unflinching truth, immediacy and emotional power of Fallada's prose is the charming, almost folkloric whimsicality that makes him such a master story-teller.

School for Barbarians


Erika Mann - 1938
    The Nazi program prepared for its future by alienating children from their parents, promoting notions of racial superiority instead of science, and developing a cult of personality centered on Hitler.

Nor the Years Condemn


Robin Hyde - 1938
    Through the story of Douglas Stark, we see the many ways in which New Zealand was failing their expectations. It was not the "and fit for heroes" they had fought for, but a changing society moving through the tough times of the twenties and thirties.

Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace March 1918


John Wheeler-Bennett - 1938