Codebreaking Sisters: Our Secret War


Patricia Owtram - 2020
    Collaborating with Bletchley Park, she is tasked with intercepting German shipping radio in a bid to crack the seemingly impenetrable Enigma Code.Jean's quick brain for crossword solving lands her a secretive role as Code & Cipher Officer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. At just 18 years of age, Jean is posted to Cairo, before moving on to Italy to aid the Partisan efforts against the Nazis.As the sisters continue to demonstrate their outstanding intelligence, resilience and fierce determination, the tide of war gradually begins to turn in Britain's favour.This is the astonishing story of persistence, comradeship and fighting spirit showed by everyday people in bringing the Nazis down.

My Life in the Red Army


Fred Virski - 2014
    The book chronicles Virski's experiences as a soldier in the Ukraine and Central Asia, describing the hardships, his comrades-in-arms, the food, clothing, and interactions with officers and the NKVD (secret police). When war with Germany breaks-out, Virski witnesses scenes of brutality and is caught in fierce fighting, where he is wounded and hospitalized. Following his recovery, he eventually makes his way back to his native Poland. My Life in the Red Army is impressive for its straightforward style yet tinged with a sense of humor towards his situation.

I, a Squealer: The Insider's Account of the "Pied Piper of Tucson" Murders


Richard Bruns - 2018
    The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Righteous Brothers filled the airwaves. Television shows like "The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriett" and "The Andy Griffith Show" mirrored the innocence of life in the dusty city of Tucson, Az. But the sunbaked desert surrounding Tucson was hiding a sinister secret. A psychopath names Charles Schmid, later nicknamed the "Pied Piper of Tucson" by Life Magazine, would steal that innocence away, along with the lives of three beautiful teenage girls.In this firsthand account written in 1967, Richard Bruns shares the evolution of his friendship with Schmid, the details of getting involved way in over his head, and how he finally summoned the courage to blow the whistle to end the deadly rampage that shocked the nation and changed the city of Tucson forever.

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle


Fiona Carnarvon - 2011
    Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war.    Much like her Masterpiece Classic counterpart, Lady Cora Crawley, Lady Almina was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvon's ancestral home.  Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman.    This rich tale contrasts the splendor of Edwardian life in a great house against the backdrop of the First World War and offers an inspiring and revealing picture of the woman at the center of the history of Highclere Castle.

Courage and Grace


Yoseph Komem - 2019
    Perpetual mortal danger. Only a combination of resourcefulness and pure luck can save them. Joseph and Yitzhak are two young brothers hiding under fake Christian identities in the Aryan section of a city in Poland during the Holocaust.The two brothers, like their parents, know their lives are in constant danger and that any mistake may expose their true identities, sending them to a painful death.The small family does everything in its power to save itself and is lucky to receive assistance from their courageous gentile friends, but their seemingly free lives outside the ghetto becoming increasingly difficult and complex with every passing day…Before their eyes lies one thing only—the extraordinary struggle to stay alive against all odds.Courage and Grace is the chilling and inspiring documentation of a story that will leave you riveted to your seat, flood you with heartbreaking emotions and, at the same time, with enormous hope for a better future.

Shadow of the Swastika--A Girl Comes of Age in Nazi Germany


Rebecca Malone - 2013
    The place is Nazi Germany. Lilly is not Jewish. She is a typical eight-year-old German girl who is too busy playing in the cemetery her pappa runs to worry about what is going on around her. That is until Hitler and his Nazis interrupt her life. Shadow of the Swastika is based on her life until the end of World War II. Even at a young age, Lilly is a hardheaded girl. She wants her freedom, but the tyranny and oppression of the Third Reich thwarts her desire to do and say as she pleases. Though Lilly grows up in a world of war, hunger, fear and death, she is a survivor and faces each day’s challenges with obstinance, humor, spunk and courage.

Dorchen: A Childhood Lost in War-Torn Germany


Maria Stetler - 2014
    She was an ordinary German schoolgirl from an average family thrust into the extraordinary circumstances of war. Her memoir vividly describes the price she, her family, and all the German people paid for Hitler's ambition. Relived through her memories, it is truly a story of childhood innocence lost, but also of survival through grit and courage. She endured air raids, bomb shelters, military training, capture, imprisonment, rape and harrowing escape. The author has created a razor-sharp, clear-eyed and tense narrative about her life during this frightening time, as well as the story of her early struggles as a German war bride settling into a new life in America. This is Dorchen, and she is a remarkable woman.

Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor


Jafa Wallach - 2006
    Jafa Wallet's "Bitter Freedom," which I first read as an untitled manuscript in the late 1970's, is one of the most compelling first-person accounts by a Holocaust survivor that I have ever encountered. She evokes scenes which have resonated inside my head for nearly thirty years, and its publication is an important event not only for those interested in the Holocaust, but for everyone seeking illumination into the complexities and mysteries of what it means to be human. "Nelson E Breen, Emmy Award-winning writer and director "

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918


G.J. Meyer - 2006
    In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.

The Lone Assassin: The Epic True Story of the Man Who Almost Killed Hitler


Helmut Ortner - 1993
    That is, however, until he took it upon himself to attempt to assassinate the Führer, Adolph Hitler. Being a common man who opposed the Nazi regime, Elser took the skills from his craft and worked to assemble his own bomb detonator. Every night, he snuck out to the Munich Beer Hall, where he worked on assembling the bomb that he planned to use to kill Hitler. Hidden in a hollowed-out space near the speaker’s podium, Elser’s bomb went off successfully, killing eight people. Hitler was not one of them. This is the story, scene by scene, of the events that led up to Georg Elser taking justice into his own hands, his attempt to murder the Führer, and what happened after the bomb went off. The Lone Assassin is a powerfully gripping tale that places the reader in the dark days of Munich in 1939, following Elser from the Munich Beer Hall, across the border, and sadly, to the concentration camp where his heroic life ended.

Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941–1945


Richard N. Lutjens Jr. - 2019
    Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.

Change of Seasons: A Memoir


John Oates - 2017
    Raised in a small Pennsylvania town, he was exposed to folk, blues, soul, and R&B. Meeting and teaming up with Daryl Hall in the late 1960s, they developed a style of music that was uniquely their own but never abandoned their roots. John uncovers the grit and struggle it took to secure a recording contract with the legendary Atlantic Records and chronicles the artistic twists and turns that resulted in a DJ discovering an obscure album track that would become their first hit record. This is not your typical rock and roll story. John was focused creating great music. Along the way he achieved incredible success, battling the ever-changing pop music landscape and coming to terms with complex managerial, business, and personal challenges.Daryl Hall and John Oates have over 20 albums together, more than 60 million records sold, and 29 Top 40 hits. They are the most successful pop duo in the world and members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And yet John’s story has never been told. Relying on his many hand-written journals, he brings to light many fascinating stories spanning his entire life with a journalist’s eye and a poet’s heart.In Change of Seasons, John shares his highs, lows, triumphs, and failures. He takes the reader on a wild ride through all the eras, personalities and music that has shaped him into what he is.

Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoirs of Hitler's Photographer


Heinrich Hoffmann - 1955
    Hoffmann published his first book of photographs in 1919, following his work as an official photographer for the German army. In 1920 he joined the Nazi Party, and his association with Hitler began.He became Hitler's official photographer and traveled with him extensively. He took over two million photographs of Hitler, and they were distributed widely, including on postage stamps, an enterprise that proved very profitable for both men. Hoffmann published several books on Hitler in the 1930s, including The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933). Hoffmann and Hitler were very close, and he acted not only as a personal confidante - his memoirs include rare details of the F�hrer - but also as a matchmaker - it is Hoffmann who introduced Eva Braun, his studio assistant, to Hitler.At the end of the war, Hoffmann was arrested by the US military, who also seized his photographic archive, and was sentenced to imprisonment for Nazi profiteering.This edition of a classic book includes photographs by Hoffmann and a new introduction by Roger Moorhouse.

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18


Joseph Loconte - 2015
    R. R. Tolkien and C. S. LewisThe First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

The Elegant Lie


Sam Eastland - 2019
    In the bombed-out ruins of Cologne, Hanno Dasch is king. Director of the most successful black market operation in post-war Germany, Dasch has kept his clients supplied with goods so extravagant and rare that they were almost impossible to find even at the height of Germany's conquests.Nobody but Dasch, his enigmatic daughter and the war criminal he keeps as his bodyguard know how he does it.None of this has escaped the attention of Allied Intelligence, who face not only the systemic corruption of a country where everything is in short supply, but the growing threat of Stalin's KGB.Fearing that Dasch will soon expand his business to include dealings with Russia, and invite the further meddling of Russian agents in the west, the CIA sets in motion an undercover operation to infiltrate and, ultimately, destroy Dasch's empire. A disgraced American Army officer, Nathan Carter, is recruited to approach Dasch and to ingratiate himself with promises of stolen army supplies. As Carter moves further and further into the labyrinth of Dasch's world, it soon becomes clear that the black market ring has already been compromised, but by someone even more dangerous than the Russians.Carter stumbles upon a counterfeiting ring, with whom Dasch has unwittingly gone into business, which seems to have been created with the sole purpose of destroying the Soviet economy, something it could easily do with the superlative quality of the forged bills it is producing. With Carter caught in the middle, and facing the danger that his cover might be blown at any moment, a race begins between the Russian and American spy agencies to uncover who is responsible, before the situation escalates to war.