World War II

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A Boy at War is the first of three novels by Harry Mazer that feature Adam Pelko as their protagonist. Published in 2001 by Simon & Schuster, it was followed by A Boy No More (2004) and Heroes Don’t Run (2005). Sergeant Harry Mazer was born in New York City in 1925 and served in the United States Air Force in the European theater of World War II from 1943-1945. He was awarded the Purple... Read A Boy at War Summary

Address Unknown (1938) by American writer Kathrine Taylor details the rise of Nazi Germany through the correspondence of two men, one of whom is Jewish and one of whom is not. The short novel explores themes such as Radicalization, The Impact of Paranoia and Fascism, and The Loss of Friendship and Family.Chapter 1 Summary: “November 12, 1932”A Jewish German man named Max writes to his business partner, a German gentile, or individual who isn’t Jewish... Read Address Unknown Summary

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Allies is a novel by American author Alan Gratz that was originally published in 2019. It belongs to the genre of young adult historical fiction and is set during World War II. Gratz is the author of 17 novels for children/young adults as of 2021 and has won awards from Random House Books and the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. His novel Refugee won the National Jewish Book Award and the Young Hoosier... Read Allies Summary

A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy, first published in Germany 2007, is author Thomas Buergenthal's account of his childhood during the Nazi Occupation. Buergenthal was 6 years old when forced to abandon his home and spend the rest of his childhood running from Nazis and struggling to survive the Holocaust. Buergenthal’s horrific journey took him through bombings, labor camps, concentration camps, and “death marches.” He lost most of his... Read A Lucky Child Summary

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An Army at Dawn is a nonfiction military history book published in 2002 by American author and journalist Rick Atkinson. Subtitled The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the book chronicles the successful Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II. The first installment of Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History.This study guide refers to the 2002 edition published by Henry Holt and Company.Plot SummaryOn September 1... Read An Army at Dawn Summary

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A Soldier’s Play (1981) was written by Charles Fuller. It premiered off-Broadway with the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981, and was arguably the company’s most successful work to date. It ran for nearly 500 performances and earned the Critics Circle Best Play Award and the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play is loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1924), an unfinished novella about a well-liked, handsome sailor who is falsely accused of a... Read A Soldier's Play Summary

Atonement (2001) is an award-winning novel by British author Ian McEwan that spans the last two-thirds of the 20th century. The novel was a New York Times Bestseller for seven straight weeks and shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction in 2001. The 2007 film adaptation won an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and a BAFTA Award. McEwan is critically acclaimed with over a dozen novels and other works of fiction to his name, as... Read Atonement Summary

Austerlitz is a historical novel by W. G. Sebald first published in 2001. Sebald was a German writer and academic who wrote mainly about the loss of memory and the Holocaust. Austerlitz, Sebald’s final novel, centers on an architectural historian, Jacques Austerlitz, who is tormented by his repressed past as a Jewish child evacuated from Czechoslovakia in 1939. The book was an international bestseller and won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction... Read Austerlitz Summary

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy is a 2019 biography by Sonia Purnell. It tells the story of Virginia Hall, an American spy whose efforts were critical to France’s success in World War II. Despite its larger-than-life nature and importance to the Allied forces’ success, Hall’s story has remained largely unknown until now.Plot SummaryVirginia was born into an affluent family. Her mother, Barbara, wanted her to... Read A Woman of No Importance Summary

Band of Brothers is a nonfiction history of one World War II company of paratroopers, Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne. Through a combination of narrative, interviews, maps, and excerpts from letters, Stephen E. Ambrose follows the lives of this group of soldiers from their training in 1942, their deployments in Europe, and their lives after the war. By focusing on the lives of members of one particular company, Ambrose reveals the reality... Read Band of Brothers Summary

Behind the Bedroom Wall is a 1996 Young Adult historical fiction novel by Korean American author Laura E. Williams. The novel won the 1997 Jane Addams’ Children’s Book Award. Williams has written several other novels, including The Mystic Lighthouse series, Up a Creek, The Ghost Stallion, The Executioner’s Daughter, The Can Man, and Unexpected.Set in 1942 Germany, Behind the Bedroom Wall follows a 13-year-old Aryan German girl named Korinna Rehme, who is an active member... Read Behind the Bedroom Wall Summary

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Black Rain is a 1965 historical novel by Japanese author Masuji Ibuse. The novel blends authentic accounts and information with a fictional plot to describe the aftermath of the destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by an American atomic bomb in 1945. Black Rain was adapted into a film in 1989. This guide uses an eBook version of the 1979 edition of Black Rain, translated into English by John Bester.Plot SummaryShigematsu Shizuma is a... Read Black Rain Summary

In Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder, a historian specializing in Central and Eastern European history and the Holocaust, offers a groundbreaking examination of the pogroms and mass killings perpetrated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before and during World War II. Published in 2010 by Basic Books, this seminal work explores the geopolitical, ideological, and military confrontations between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union that led to the deaths of approximately... Read Bloodlands Summary

Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical play by American playwright Neil Simon. It is the first play in Simon’s Eugene Trilogy and follows its young protagonist as he grapples with adolescence and identity in the midst of the Great Depression. Its initial 1983 Broadway run enjoyed critical acclaim and won several awards. Most notably, actor Matthew Broderick won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for originating the role of Eugene. Despite its initial success... Read Brighton Beach Memoirs Summary

Burnt Shadows, first published in 2009, is the fifth novel by Pakistani-British author Kamila Shamsie. A political-historical novel, it was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which celebrates books that contribute to a greater understanding of racism and diversity. Shamsie has been shortlisted several times for a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; she also received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature... Read Burnt Shadows Summary

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City of Thieves, published in 2008, is a historical novel by Jewish American author David Benioff. The story is framed as the memories of the narrator’s grandfather, Lev Beniov. The story follows Lev, a Russian Jew, and Kolya, a Cossack soldier, during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. The book was well received upon publication and later inspired the postapocalyptic video game The Last of Us. City of Thieves is the second novel... Read City of Thieves Summary

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Carol Matas is the author of the 1993 novel for young readers, Daniel’s Story, and she published the book in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial exhibit Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story. Like the museum exhibit, Daniel’s Story presents a researched account of what it was like to grow up in Nazi Germany and live through the Holocaust. Before she wrote Daniel’s Story, Matas published two historical novels about the Dutch resistance during... Read Daniel's Story Summary

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Premiering in 1975, Death and the King’s Horseman is a play written by Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. The play is set in Oyo, Nigeria, during World War II and tells the story of Elesin Oba, the titular king’s horseman who must die by ritual suicide after the Yoruba king dies. The colonial government stops Elesin’s suicide, but the text also suggests that Elesin, a robust man full of life, might not have fulfilled his duty even... Read Death and the King's Horseman Summary

Desert Exile tells the story of the author Yoshiko Uchida and the Uchida family’s experience as Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps by the U.S. government after the Pearl Harbor attacks during World War II. The book follows a linear narrative arc that details the Uchidas’ experience, while Uchida often reflects discursively, using one point in her life as a vortex for connecting that moment to another memory and in turn creating a larger impression of... Read Desert Exile Summary

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Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel written by British author J.G. Ballard. In it, Jim, the 11-year-old son of a wealthy British family, is living in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China on the eve of Pearl Harbor, 1941. When Japanese forces attack the Settlement, Jim is separated from his parents. He survives for several weeks by scavenging food from abandoned houses, before being arrested by the Japanese. He is then taken to... Read Empire of the Sun Summary

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Farewell to Manzanar is a memoir published in 1973 by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. It is a nonfiction account that employs first-person narration. Centering on a young girl’s life in the Manzanar Japanese American concentration camp, Farewell to Manzanar is used in school curricula throughout the US and inspired a 1976 film of the same name. The version used for this guide is the 1995 edition from Laurel Leaf Books.Content Warning: This guide discusses the US... Read Farewell to Manzanar Summary

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Friedrich was written by Hans Peter Richter and was first published in Germany in 1961. It is a work of historical fiction, focusing on the rise of the Nationalsozialistische Deutscher Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party). Richter was born in 1925 and personally witnessed the rise of the Nazi movement and Hitler’s subsequent dictatorship. Richter himself also fought during the war. After the war, he went on to study psychology and sociology. He wrote many books and was... Read Friedrich Summary

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Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission by American journalist and historian Hampton Sides tells the story of a daring rescue raid on the Japanese-controlled Cabanatuan Allied prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines at the end of World War II. 121 US Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and hundreds of armed and unarmed Filipino guerillas successfully rescued over 500 remaining POWs on January 30, 1945. The book details the stories of the American POWs... Read Ghost Soldiers Summary

Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Goodbye to Berlin, was first published in 1939. The novel’s narrator, who is also named Christopher Isherwood, recounts his experiences living in Berlin, Germany from 1929 to 1933. Isherwood focuses the novel on the relationships he has with his friends and acquaintances and explores both the beautiful and unseemly parts of the city he calls home, all while the rise of Nazi influence grows steadily in the background.Goodbye to Berlin’s chapters are... Read Goodbye To Berlin Summary

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Goodnight Mister Tom, a children’s novel by Michelle Magorian published in 1981, tells the story of a young boy facing abuse, who is relocated to the countryside to the care of an elderly recluse, Mr. Tom, in the wake of WW2.At the height of WW2, William, a young boy who lives in London, is sent to the countryside to escape the onslaught of London. He lives with Mr. Tom, a widower who lives near a... Read Goodnight Mister Tom Summary

Gravity’s Rainbow is a 1973 historical satire by American novelist Thomas Pynchon, who is known for complex narratives that are often dense, fragmented, and episodic. The story is set during the last days of World War II as characters search for a mysterious rocket developed by the German military. The novel has been hailed as one of the most important English language works of the 20th century.Pynchon, disinclined to engage with the press or public... Read Gravity's Rainbow Summary

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Originally published in 2002 by Second Story Press, Hana’s Suitcase is a historical text by Karen Levine that weaves together the story of two young children in the Holocaust with the narrative of a Japanese museum curator in the early 21st century. Levine, a radio journalist and producer, first heard about Hana Brady’s suitcase from a news article and subsequently produced a radio show about the story. This launched what would become Hana’s Suitcase and... Read Hana's Suitcase Summary

Hiroshima, an account of the first atomic bomb used in warfare, is a nonfiction book by John Hersey. Alfred A. Knopf published it in 1946, several months after it first appeared as an article in the New Yorker. The magazine ran the article at the end of August 1946, just after the first anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, devoting the entire issue to the lengthy piece. The issue sold out immediately and was... Read Hiroshima Summary

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a historical novel published in 2009. The story follows Henry Lee at two pivotal stages in his life—in 1942, when he is a 12-year-old with a crush on a Japanese girl, and in 1986, when he is recently widowed. The book, Ford’s debut novel, spent 130 weeks atop the New York Times Best-Seller List and won the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature... Read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Summary

I Am David by Anne Holm is a children’s historical fiction novel written in 1963. It was originally written in Danish but has since been translated into many languages, including English, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, and Konkani. It was first published in the United States under the name North to Freedom but eventually was retranslated into its original title. It was made into a movie in 2003. The novel received several awards... Read I Am David Summary

If This Is a Man is a Holocaust memoir written by Primo Levi, first published by the small publishing house Francesco de Silva in 1947. The text was out of print by 1952. In June 1958, however, the publisher Enaudi, which had previously rejected the manuscript, republished it with slight revisions, and translations began to appear. Re-publication secured Levi’s status as a canonical writer of the Holocaust.This study guide refers to the English translation of... Read If This is a Man Summary

Holocaust survivor Livia Bitton-Jackson (b. Elli L. Friedmann on February 28, 1931) is the author of three memoirs: I Have Lived a Thousand Years, My Bridges of Hope, and Hello, America. She was born in Šamorin, Czechoslovakia. Hungarian troops occupied her hometown, renaming it Somorja, in 1938. In 1944, German troops occupied Hungary and deported Hungarian Jews to concentration camps. Among the deportees were Bitton-Jackson; her parents, Markus and Laura; and her brother, Bubi. After... Read I Have Lived a Thousand Years Summary

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer is a memoir written by Irene Gut Opdyke with help from historical-fiction author Jennifer Armstrong. The book details Opdyke’s experience as a young Polish woman who rescued Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. Armstrong explains in a note at the end of the book that she constructed the narrative after countless hours interviewing Opdyke. For the purpose of this study guide, Opdyke is referred to... Read In My Hands Summary

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson is a non-fiction book published in 2011. It recounts the early years of Germany's Nazi regime from the perspective of the American ambassador, William Dodd, and his family. In Berlin, the family watches with growing horror as Hitler increases his dictatorial control over Germany, rearms the country in preparation for war, and conducts a national campaign of violent... Read In the Garden of Beasts Summary

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Left for Dead is a work of military nonfiction for young adults by Pete Nelson. It tells the true story of what happened to the men whose ship, the USS Indianapolis, sank during World War II in July 1945. Hunter Scott, who wrote an introduction for the book, studied the incident for a school history fair project and became determined to discover the truth about what happened. Dismayed by the miscarriage of justice surrounding the... Read Left for Dead Summary

Legends of the Fall is a collection of three novellas by Jim Harrison, including “Revenge,” “The Man Who Gave Up His Name,” and the titular novella, “Legends of the Fall.” First published in 1979 by Collins, Legends of the Fall remains one of Harrison’s most highly regarded works. Harrison wrote across a range of genres such as fiction, poetry, essay, and film and was the recipient of several awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work... Read Legends of the Fall Summary

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Life After Life is a work of adult historical fiction written by acclaimed British author Kate Atkinson and published in 2013. Atkinson’s debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize and her subsequent novels have all been international bestsellers, including the mystery series featuring Jackson Brodie, which has been adapted to a BBC show.Life After Life explores tumultuous events of the mid-20th century, particularly the two world... Read Life After Life Summary

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Manhattan Beach is a 2017 novel by American writer Jennifer Egan. Born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, Egan, now a New Yorker, did much of her research for the novel at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Using oral histories, photographs, and other supporting documents, she reconstructed the vibrant world of the wartime Brooklyn Naval Yard and Coney Island. The novel won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, was long-listed for the... Read Manhattan Beach Summary

Man’s Search for Meaning details the author, Victor Frankl’s experience in a concentration camp and his attempts to overcome and understand the trauma of that experience. The book is in three parts: I. Experiences in a Concentration Camp; II. Logotherapy in a Nutshell; and III. Postscript 1984: The Case for Tragic Optimism.Victor Frankl was born in 1905 and later became a psychiatrist in Vienna. Although he was Jewish, Frankl was protected from arrest by the Nazis... Read Man's Search for Meaning Summary

Maus by Art Spiegelman is the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. It originally ran in Spiegelman’s Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991 before receiving mainstream attention as two collected volumes, Maus I in 1986 and Maus II in 1991. This guide is based on the 1996 complete edition. This historic memoir interlaces two narratives, one of Spiegelman’s Jewish father as he survives World War II Poland and the Auschwitz concentration camp, and... Read Maus Summary

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Moon Tiger is a 1987 novel by Dame Penelope Lively, winner of the Booker Prize. Using multiple points of view all stemming from the overarching narrator, Lively tells a life story that is also a history of the world as well as an exploration of how we know things, how knowledge is validated and passed down, and the role of our own consciousness in determining what is true and what is fiction, what is fact... Read Moon Tiger Summary

Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a World War II novel first published in 1961. Vonnegut’s third novel, it garnered little recognition when it was first released, and it wasn’t until Vonnegut’s success with Cat’s Cradle in 1963 and his breakout fifth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), that Mother Night was revaluated as a powerful work of moral exploration by an author who would go on to become America’s leading satirist and who is now recognized as... Read Mother Night Summary

This guide is based on the first edition of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, published in 2001 by Princeton University Press. Written by Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors is a critically acclaimed account of Poland’s role in the Holocaust. It inspired the 2012 film Aftermath, directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski.On July 10, 1941, nearly two years after the German invasion of Poland initiated World War II, the non-Jewish citizens of a small... Read Neighbors Summary

Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir recounting the author’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald during the last two years of World War II. The book was published in France in 1958; a shortened English translation was published in the United States in 1960.In 1944, the 15-year old Wiesel, his father, mother, and sisters were deported from the village of Sighet in Hungary and interned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration... Read Night Summary

Anita Lobel is the author of No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War. First published in 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Award, the memoir details Lobel’s memories of growing up in Poland and how she survived World War II and the Holocaust. As the book follows Lobel from a child to a teen, it’s also a coming-of-age story and features themes about displacement and identity, as well as ideas like the differences... Read No Pretty Pictures Summary

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Parallel Journeys (1995) is a nonfiction book by Eleanor Ayer. It won several awards, including the American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults. An author of many nonfiction books about the Holocaust, Ayer pairs the stories of Alfons Heck (a former Hitler Youth member) and Helen Waterford (a Holocaust survivor) to show how Nazism impacts the people it empowered and targeted. Ayer didn’t choose Alfons and Helen randomly. They formed a partnership in the... Read Parallel Journeys Summary

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Schindler’s List (originally titled Schindler’s Ark) is a 1982 historical novel by Australian author Thomas Keneally. It tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party who used his position as a German industrialist to save more than 1,200 people’s lives during the war. In protecting as many people as he could from the genocidal Nazi regime, Schindler risked being sent to a concentration camp himself. Keneally wrote the novel with the... Read Schindler's List Summary

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Someone Named Eva is a 2007 middle-grade historical fiction novel by American teacher and children’s author Joan M. Wolf. The book is set around the 1942 Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and Slovakia) during World War II. The story follows 11-year-old Milada Kralicek and her journey of loss and rediscovery. Milada struggles to remember her Czech family and identity after Nazi soldiers kidnap her and force her to... Read Someone Named Eva Summary

Shy, 12-year-old Margaret and her high-spirited friend Elizabeth question their beliefs about WWII when they discover that the brother of their school nemesis is a deserter in Mary Downing Hahn’s middle grade historical fiction novel, Stepping on the Cracks (1991). The novel explores themes of moral ambiguity, war, friendship, and domestic abuse, drawing on Hahn’s childhood memories of growing up in College Park, Maryland. In a short biography at the end of the novel Hahn... Read Stepping on the Cracks Summary

Suite Française, by French-based Ukrainian writer Irène Némirovsky (born 1903), was published in the original French upon its discovery in 2004. However, Némirovsky started writing Suite in 1941, during the Nazi occupation of France, when those with a Jewish ethnic background like her faced persecution under the contemporary antisemitic regime. She and her husband, Michel Epstein, and their two young daughters, Denise and Élisabeth, had fled Paris for Issy-l’Évêque, a rural village in Burgundy. There... Read Suite Francaise Summary

Summer of My German Soldier (1973) is a young adult novel by American author Bette Greene. The book is heavily based on Greene’s own childhood in Arkansas and Tennessee during World War II and her experiences growing up Jewish in the conservative Christian South. A made-for-TV film adaptation starring Kristy McNichol was released in 1978. The sequel to the novel, Morning Is a Long Time Coming, was published in 1978. Summer of My German Soldier... Read Summer of My German Soldier Summary

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The Assault is an historical fiction novel written by Dutch author Harry Mulisch. First published in 1982 under the Dutch title De Aanslag, the novel was translated and published in English in 1985 and later translated into over a dozen languages. Mulisch was born in Haarlem, Netherlands, the same setting in which The Assault occurs. The story is based on actual events and Mulisch’s experiences during German occupation in World War II. The narrative is... Read The Assault Summary

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a historical fiction novel published in 2006 by celebrated Irish author John Boyne, known both for his adult and young adult fiction. Set around the World War II concentration camp Auschwitz, the novel combines realism with parable. It portrays a young German boy, Bruno, whose father is commander of the camp, and his unusual and ultimately tragic friendship with a Jewish boy, Shmuel. The work sold over seven... Read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Summary

The Boy Who Dared is a young adult novel, written by award-winning children’s author Susan Campbell Bartoletti and published in 2008. The Boy Who Dared is a historical fiction novel based on the real life of Helmuth Hübener, a German boy who defied the Nazis during WWII. Alternating between his last day on death row and his memories, Helmuth’s story depicts the danger of silence, the value of the individual, and the power of the... Read The Boy Who Dared Summary

Julie Otsuka is a Japanese American writer who was born in 1962 in Palo Alto, California. Both The Buddha in the Attic (2011) and her 2002 novel, When the Emperor was Divine, portray the Japanese American experience of internment camps following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The subject is close to Otsuka’s heart; the FBI arrested her grandfather on suspicion of being an enemy spy, while her mother, uncle, and grandmother were... Read The Buddha in the Attic Summary

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Jane Yolen is the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic, a novel for young readers (1988). The main character, Hannah Stern, is almost 13 at the start of the novel. The story begins in her present, the late 1980s, and then travels back in time to 1942. The novel straddles multiple genres: fantasy, time slip, and historical fiction. Stern experiences the tragic history of the Holocaust, and Yolen uses her knowledge of history to provide accurate... Read The Devil's Arithmetic Summary

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Written between 1942 and 1944, The Diary of Anne Frank, aka The Diary of a Young Girl, is a collection of journal entries by Anne Frank, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, while in hiding with her family for two years in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. When Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, her diary was given to her father, Otto Frank, the only known survivor of the family. The diary was first published... Read The Diary of a Young Girl Summary

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The Endless Steppe is a young adult memoir in which Esther Hautzig, the author, details her five-year exile in Siberia, from June 1941 to March 1946. When the American politician and diplomat Adlai E. Stevenson visited the village of Rubtsovsk and wrote about it, Esther Hautzig wrote to him to tell him about her time living there. Stevenson suggested that Esther write about her experience. Published in 1968, during the Cold War, the book resonated... Read The Endless Steppe Summary

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The English Patient (1992) is a historical romance novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje. The novel explores the relationships between four dissimilar people living in an abandoned Italian monastery at the end of World War II. The eponymous English patient—actually a Hungarian count burned beyond recognition—tells Canadian nurse Hana the story of his forbidden romance with British amateur cartographer Katharine Clifton as their small team attempted, several years earlier, to map North African deserts. Using... Read The English Patient Summary

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The Green Glass Sea is the 2006 children’s historical fiction and debut novel by American author Ellen Klages. Set in New Mexico in 1943, the story tells of 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan, an outcast mechanical engineering prodigy who arrives to live with her father in the mysterious town of Los Alamos, New Mexico (also called the Hill). Dewey slowly learns that her father and several other scientists are working on a top-secret project called the “gadget.”... Read The Green Glass Sea Summary

Written in epistolary form, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a historical novel set during the German Occupation of the English Channel Islands during World War II (WWII). The novel was co-written by Mary Ann Shaffer, an editor, librarian, and bookshop clerk, and her niece, Annie Barrows, author of the Ivy and Bean children’s books series. Shaffer began writing the novel, but when she was diagnosed with cancer she requested Barrows’s help... Read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Summary

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The Hiding Place, published in 1971, is by author Corrie ten Boom and co-authors John and Elizabeth Sherrill. Ten Boom’s autobiographical account centers on her family’s work with the Dutch underground during World War II and her family’s punishments after being arrested. The authors consistently draw attention to the ten Boom family’s Christian faith and the ways in which it shaped their experiences and inspired them to persevere. Ten Boom wrote many other books after... Read The Hiding Place Summary

Chilean-American author Isabel Allende’s novel The Japanese Lover (2015) spans decades and continents, focusing on Alma Belasco, whose parents send her from war-torn 1939 Poland to the safety of San Francisco. There, she falls in love with Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet son of the family gardener—until they are pulled apart by the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent imprisonment of Ichimei and his family. In the present day, Alma is an old woman living... Read The Japanese Lover Summary

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Published in March 1942 and inspired by Steinbeck’s work during the World Wars, The Moon is Down explores the psychological, moral, and ethical implications of a town occupied during wartime. The novel focuses on the struggle of an authoritarian occupier, Colonel Lanser, to subdue the democratic revolt of the people in an unnamed northern European town. John Steinbeck is a prominent figure of American contemporary fiction and is the author of 33 completed works, including... Read The Moon Is Down Summary

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In The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights, historian Steve Sheinkin traces the story of the Port Chicago 50, a group of African-American sailors charged with mutiny for disobeying orders during World War II. Sheinkin’s history opens, however, with the story of Dorie Miller, a black mess attendant stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attack in 1942. Though not trained for battle, Miller courageously begins fighting with an anti-aircraft... Read The Port Chicago 50 Summary

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The Rape of Nanking is a historical nonfiction book published in 1997 by American author and journalist Iris Chang. Subtitled The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, the book chronicles the 1937 Nanking massacre, during which the Imperial Japanese Army, over a six-week period, killed between 260,000 and 400,000 Chinese noncombatants and raped between 20,000 and 80,000 women. The Rape of Nanking was enormously influential in drawing attention to Japanese wartime atrocities, earning Chang numerous... Read The Rape of Nanking Summary

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Thornton Wilder’s dramatic masterpiece, The Skin of Our Teeth, opened on Broadway in November of 1942, less than a year after the United States entered World War II. On the heels of the Great Depression (1929-1939), the war meant more sacrifice and hardship for the average American family, and another era of fear, loss, and anxiety about the future of humanity. The play is a satirical allegory for the human race’s seemingly indomitable will to... Read The Skin of Our Teeth Summary

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz is a bestselling 2020 work of narrative nonfiction by Erik Larson recounting Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister of Great Britain—a year marked by the Blitz, or Nazi bombing of England. Britain’s top naval official, Churchill is chosen prime minister on May 10, 1940 amid widespread discontent with the current leader, Neville Chamberlain. Parliament revolts against Chamberlain because of... Read The Splendid and the Vile Summary

The Storyteller is a best-selling novel by prolific author Jodi Picoult. Published in 2013, it is Picoult’s 20th novel. Picoult is a prolific author known for tackling complex social themes and is the recipient of many awards, including the 2019 Hale Award and a lifetime achievement award from the Romance Writers of America. In The Storyteller, she weaves together several different narratives, delving into complex power dynamics and exploring themes of forgiveness, morality, and freedom... Read The Storyteller Summary

The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal is a book of non-fiction. The first section, also titled “The Sunflower,” is an account of Wiesenthal’s experience as a concentration camp prisoner under the Nazi regime. In the account, Wiesenthal describes his life in Poland prior to the German occupation, his experiences of anti-Semitism within the Polish culture, and his life as a concentration camp prisoner. He describes life in the concentration camp, the continuous humiliations, the hunger, the... Read The Sunflower Summary

English academic and writer A. S. Byatt uses the Blitz—Nazi Germany’s bombing campaign against London and other British cities—as the context for her short story “The Thing in the Forest,” which was first published in The New Yorker in January 2002. This work of historical fiction is one of many by the acclaimed author and critic, whose historiographic, metafictional novel Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990. This study guide uses the 2011 Kindle Edition... Read The Thing in the Forest Summary

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The War I Finally Won is a work of historical fiction written by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley. The novel is intended for middle grade readers. It was published in 2017, and has won numerous awards, including qualifying for the New York Times Best Seller list, winning the California Young Reader’s Medal, and being named one of the Washington Post’s Best Children’s Books of the Year. The War I Finally Won is a sequel to Bradley’s highly... Read The War I Finally Won Summary

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They Called Us Enemy is a 2019 graphic memoir written by author, actor, and activist George Takei and illustrated by Harmony Becker. The story chronicles Takei’s childhood experience in the Japanese internment camps in America during World War II. Takei frames the narrative with a modern-day talk he gives at the home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who presided over the country during the internment period. During the talk, Takei tells his family’s story while... Read They Called Us Enemy Summary

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The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane AckermanThe Zookeeper’s Wife is a non-fiction narrative recounting the heroic efforts of Antonina Żabińska and her husband, Jan Żabiński, during World War II. When soldiers of the Third Reich invade Poland on September 1, 1939, Jan is the ambitious director of the Warsaw Zoo. Antonina is an amazingly gifted woman who connects emotionally with all the animals in the zoo and the multitudes of human visitors and officials drawn to... Read The Zookeeper's Wife Summary

Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 2004. A historical fiction novel for young adult readers, Thin Wood Walls explores the experience of incarceration through the eyes of an 11-year-old Japanese American boy during World War II. The novel depicts themes of hope, family, resilience, and xenophobia, or bigotry against individuals from other countries. Thin Wood Walls is a Washington Reads Selection and a Mark Twain Award nominee. It... Read Thin Wood Walls Summary

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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption is a biography by Laura Hillenbrand that tells the life story of Louie Zamperini, an Italian-American from Torrance, California who lived from 1917 to 2014. Published in 2010, Unbroken was a The New York Times bestseller for over four years.Plot SummaryIn his youth, Louie Zamperini was the town troublemaker, a boy who used his cunning to commit acts of petty theft and public nuisance... Read Unbroken Summary

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Heda Margolius Kovály’s memoir begins in Prague during World War II. After the Nazi invasion, Heda and her family are sent to a ghetto, and, later, to concentration camps in Poland, where both her mother and father perish. Heda manages to escape, however, and makes her way back to Prague. Once there, she realizes that even old friends, for the most part, are unwilling to help her, as doing so would put them at risk.This... Read Under A Cruel Star Summary

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