Second World War Books

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Book SynopsisFollow the conflict of the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 in this unique volume, published in association with Imperial War Museums, London, featuring historical maps and photographs from their archives, and fascinating commentary from an expert historian.Trade Review‘Beautifully produced book that will interest military historians and map lovers alike’ - Who Do You Think You Are magazine ‘Expert commentary and a fresh perspective on the events of the war’ - Family Tree Magazine ‘Mapping the Second World War draws on the remarkable maps of IWM’s unparalleled archive to offer a new perspective on the conflict’s key moments’ - Antiques Diary

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Book SynopsisAn Instant New York Times BestsellerBeloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with his most important novel to date, an unforgettable story of truth and lies set during the Holocaust.Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading ?north,? where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day.But when the final train is loaded, Nico sees his family being herded into a boxcar. Only then does he discover that he has helped send them?and everyone he knows and loves?to their doom at Auschwitz.Nico escapes?but he never tells the truth again.In The Little Liar, Mitch Albom examines the human repercussions of deception by interweaving the stories of Nico, who yearns for forgiveness; his older brother, Sebastian, who vows revenge against him; Fannie, the girl who must choose between them; and Udo Graf, the Nazi officer who forever changed their lives with his lies.Through the war years, the concentration camps, and the decades that follow, Albom reveals the consequences of each person?s honesty and dishonesty, bringing them back to where it all started in a staggering climax worthy of the best of Albom?s internationally embraced stories.

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Book SynopsisVirtual Holocaust Memory offers the first comprehensive account of a unique historical juncture, as twenty-first century digital culture meets the edge of living Holocaust memory.Trade ReviewVirtual Holocaust Memory is several books in one. * Bryan Cheyette, Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Interactive Video Testimony Chapter One: Entering Dimensions in Testimony Chapter Two: Ghosting the Museum Chapter Three: Witness in the Light Stage Part II: Reading the Virtual Chapter Four: Virtual Landscapes Chapter Five: The Virtual Anne Frank Chapter Six: The Topography of Terror and Resistance to the Virtual Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA concise history of the Second World War. Table of ContentsOperation 'Husky': Invasion of Sicily • Italy: Invasion and Surrender • Operation 'Cartwheel': War for New Guinea • Island Hopping in the Pacific: Gilbert and Marshall Islands • The Battle for Monte Cassino • D-Day • Battle for Normandy • The V-weapons Campaign • The Marianas: Defence to the Death • Operation 'Bagration' • Breakout: Operation 'Cobra' • The end of Vichy France: Operation 'Dragoon' • The Liberation of Paris • Operation 'Market Garden' • The Recapture of the Philippines • The Battle of the Bulge • Soviet Advance on Germany: Vistula-Oder Operation • Iwo Jima • The Fire-bombing of Tokyo • The Western Advance in Germany: From the Rhine to the Elbe • Okinawa • Liberation of the Camps • Victory in Burma • Battle for Berlin • Victory in Italy • The German Surrender • The Atomic Bombs • The Japanese Surrender.

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Book SynopsisThe battle of Saipan lasted twenty-five hellish days in the summer of 1944, and the stakes couldn''t have been higher. If Japan lost possession of the island, all hope for victory would be lost. For the Americans, the island was the only obstacle between them and the Japanese mainland. The outcome of the war in the Pacific was in the balance.Their Backs against the Sea fuses fresh interviews, oral histories, and unpublished accounts into a fast-paced narrative of the Battle of Saipan. Combining grunt''s-view grit with big-picture panorama (and one of the ugliest inter-service controversies of the war), this is the definitive dramatic story of one of the war''s toughest and most overlooked battles- and an inspiring chronicle of some of the greatest acts of valor in American military history.

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Book SynopsisNew York Times bestselling author Stephen Harding explores the little-known episode of a US cargo ship that mysteriously vanished, along with her crew, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, sparking one of the most enduring nautical mysteries of the war.Trade ReviewLibrary Journal, 9/15/16 "Harding's thorough research reconstructs the Cynthia Olson's last days...While the story of the Cynthia Olson often appears as a side note in other histories about Pearl Harbor, this harrowing account brings it to the fore, telling how a Japanese submarine was able to sail close to the U.S. mainland and sink an unarmed ship in the hours before America entered World War II...Will appeal to nautical and military historians alike." Kirkus Reviews, 10/15/16 "A detailed, well-researched book presented in a logical fashion--will appeal most to Pearl Harbor scholars and those interested in submarine warfare." "An account of a little known incident that might have seen the opening shots of the Japanese war against the United States...Their story needed to be told." ?New York Journal of Books "Harding takes a minor incident that could be reduced to a single sentence and, despite the lack of hard information about many aspects of the event, turns it into a fast-paced piece of historical detective work with very human dimensions and consequences...An engaging and satisfying book." ?Stone & Stone "Based on years of research, Dawn of Infamy explores both the military and human aspects of the Cynthia Olson story, bringing to life a complex tale of courage, tenacity, hubris and arrogance in the opening hours of America's war in the Pacific." ?Bookreporter.com "Stephen Harding researched a small part of World War II military history...with the amazing details typical of a good journalist." ?Seattle Book Review

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Book SynopsisThe dramatic untold story of the first US Army unit to cross the Pacific and strike back at the Japanese after Pearl Harbor

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Book SynopsisWhen Billy Hobbs and his fellow Hellcat aviators from Air Group 88 lifted off from the venerable Navy carrier USS Yorktown early on the morning of August 15, 1945, they had no idea they were about to carry out the final air mission of World War II. Two hours later, Yorktown received word from Admiral Nimitz that the war had ended and that all offensive operations should cease. As they were turning back, twenty Japanese planes suddenly dove from the sky above them and began a ferocious attack. Four American pilots never returned--men who had lifted off from the carrier in wartime but were shot down during peacetime.Drawing on participant letters, diaries, and interviews, newspaper and radio accounts, and previously untapped archival records, historian and prolific author of acclaimed Pacific theater books, including Tin Can Titans and Hell from the Heavens, John Wukovits tells the story of Air Group 88''s pilots and crew through their eyes. Dogf

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Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Born to Run comes a book that inspires us to unleash the extraordinary potential of the human body and climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump our way to heroic feats.Redefines the heroic ideal, establishing heroism as a skill set rather than a virtue.—NPR BooksChristopher McDougall’s journey begins with a story of remarkable athletic prowess: On the treacherous mountains of Crete, a motley band of World War II Resistance fighters—an artist, a shepherd, and a poet—abducted a German commander from the heart of the Axis occupation.To understand how, McDougall retraces their steps across the island that birthed Herakles and Odysseus, and discovers ancient techniques for endurance, sustenance, and natural movement that have been preserved in unique communities around the world.His search takes us scrambling over rooftops with a Parkour crew in London, foraging for greens with a ballerina in Brooklyn, tossing heavy pieces of driftwood on a Brazilian beach with the creator of MovNat—and, finally, to our own backyards. “McDougall traveled to Crete to examine the physical and mental capacity of Greek war heroes [and] studied natural movement, endurance, and nutrition to understand how regular people are capable of extraordinary athletic feats.... We can all adapt the tools of the athletes featured.” —Real SimpleLook for Christopher McDougall's new book, Born to Run 2, coming in December!

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Book SynopsisFew of the major campaigns of World War II aroused as much controversy as the War in North Africa, 1940-1943. This book opens with seven historiographical essays that evaluate and critically assess the major contributions to the literature on the War in North Africa.Table of ContentsPreface Narrative and Historiographical Survey Historical Background Sources for Research on the War in North Africa The Desert War, 1940-1942 The Axis Powers in North Africa Montgomery, Alam Halfa, and El Alamein Torch: The Landings in French North Africa The Tunisian Campaign Future Research Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Saint Makers chronicles the unlikely alliance between Father Hotze and Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, a country priest and a cosmopolitan Italian canon lawyer, as the two piece together the life of a long dead Korean War hero and military chaplain and fashion it into a case for eternal divinity. Joe Drape offers a front row seat to the Catholic Church''s saint-making machinery-which, in many ways, has changed little in two thousand years-and examines how, or if, faith and science can co-exist.This rich and unique narrative leads from the plains of Kansas to the opulent halls of the Vatican, through brutal Korean War prison camps, and into the stories of two individuals, Avery Gerleman and Chase Kear, whose lives were threatened by illness and injury and whose family and friends prayed to Father Kapaun, sparking miraculous recoveries in the heart of America. Gerleman is now a nurse, and Kear works as a mechanic in the aerospace industry. Both remain devoted to Father Kapaun,

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Book SynopsisWhen hostilities erupted in December 1941, Pappy Gunn was living in Manila with his family, working as a manager for Philippine Airlines. Unfortunately, when the Japanese finally marched on Manila the Air Force ordered him to fly key Army Air Force personnel out of the country. The order left him with the most important decision of his life, for he was already preparing to fly his family to safety. Whom would he take first? Unbeknownst to Pappy, MacArthur''s staff deceived him by telling him he had time to do both. While he took off from Manila with his plane full of VIP''s, the Japanese captured his wife and four children. Throwing them into the infamous Santo Tomas Internment camp, Pappy''s family suffered through abuse, privation, disease and starvation. Betrayed by his own high command, and driven by guilt, fury and devotion to his family, Pappy Gunn spent the next three years trying to rescue his loved ones. His exploits became legend: He flew four times the num

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Book SynopsisAn American hero...finally gets her due in this riveting narrative. You will absolutely love Florence Finch: her grit, her compassion, her fight. This isn''t just history; she is a woman for our times. -KEITH O''BRIEN, the New York Times bestselling author of Fly GirlsWhen Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, whose courage and sacrifice were unsurpassed in the Pacific War against Japan. Long accustomed to keeping her secrets close in service of the Allies, she waited fifty years to reveal the story of those dramatic and harrowing days to her own children.Florence was an unlikely warrior. She relied on her own intelligence and fortitude to survive on her own from the age of seven, facing bigotry as a mixed-race mestiza with the dual heritage of her American serviceman father and Filipina mother.As the war drew ever clo

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Book SynopsisIn 1990, in a drafty basement archive in Prague, two American historians made a startling discovery: a Nazi roster from 1945 that no Western investigator had ever seen. The long-forgotten document, containing more than 700 names, helped unravel the details behind the most lethal killing operation in World War Two.In the tiny Polish village of Trawniki, the SS set up a school for mass murder and then recruited a roving army of foot soldiers, 5,000 men strong, to help annihilate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. After the war, some of these men vanished, making their way to the U.S. and blending into communities across America. Though they participated in some of the most unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, Trawniki Men spent years hiding in plain sight, their terrible secrets intact.In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settl

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Book SynopsisSprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built vengeance ship USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies U.S. Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship''s command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation''s resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle.Tensions among the crew flared from the start. Astoria''s sailors and Marines were a collection of replacements, retreads, and older men. Some were broken by previous traumatic combat, most had no desire to be in the war, yet all found themselves fighting an enemy more afraid of surrender than death.The reluctant ship was called to respond to challenges that its men never could have anticipated. From a typh

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