Books I think you’ll enjoy (besides mine)…
The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice, by Simon Parkin – This book stunned me. I knew a great deal about the horrific siege of Leningrad during World War II, when the Nazis encircled the Russian city for more than 900 days (the longest siege in recorded history), resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, most by starvation. What I did not know was that Leningrad was the site of an enormous seed bank — with more than 250,000 samples hand-collected from all over the world by geneticist and dissident Nikolai Vavilov. He and his botanists believed the seeds could be bred into hearty, disease-resistant plants more suited for harsh climates, thereby preventing famines that had plagued Russia for decades, even centuries. When the Germans cut off Leningrad, and the ghastly starvation begins, the caretaker botanists are faced with an impossible choice: do they preserve the seeds for the future of Russia? Or distribute the seeds — and eat the seeds themselves — to avoid imminent starvation. Simon Parkin does a wonderful job intertwining these two narratives: the dilemma of the seed bank scientists, and the suffering of the people of Leningrad as the siege is destroying their city. Vavilov’s story is also part of the narrative in this great book.
Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am’s Yankee Clipper, by Brooke L. Blower – On February 21, 1943 – right in the middle of World War II – Pan American Airways’ celebrated seaplane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from New York’s Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport, and island-hopped its way across the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving in Lisbon the following evening, it crashed in the Tagus River, killing 24 of its 39 passengers. Author Brook L. Blower, a history professor at Boston University, does a terrific job tracing the backstories of seven Americans aboard the luxuriously outfitted plane (often referred to as a “flying boat”), their personal histories, their politics, and the paths that led them toward war. She uncovers the surprising history of American noncombatants abroad leading up to the war, and how they shaped (and were transformed by) the U.S. war effort. All the while, the narrative leads to the disastrous crash. This book captured my interest from the beginning – it served as a constant reminder of how epic World War II was and the enormous impact it had on people’s lives.
81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska’s Frozen Wilderness, by Brian Murphy (with Toula Vlahou) – This is my third World War II related recommendation, but again, in a reminder of the global nature and scope of the war, it takes place in a completely different theater: Alaska. Shortly before Christmas in 1943, five Army aviators left Alaska’s Ladd Field on a routine test flight to test their hastily retrofitted B-24 Liberator bomber in harsh winter conditions. The mission ended in a crash that claimed the lives of all but one – Leon Crane, a city kid from Philadelphia with no wilderness experience. Equipped with little more than a parachute for cover and an old Boy Scout knife in his pocket, Crane is alone in subzero temperatures – this book recounts his incredible 12-week saga. Author Brian Murphy also weaves a second story into the braided narrative – the 21st century efforts to recover the remains of the pilot who sat beside Crane in the cockpit, Second Lieutenant Harold E. Hoskin. Above all else, this book is about the limits of human endurance and our indomitable will to survive.
The Mistress and the Key (fiction special), by Ben Mezrich – In a historical mystery with implications that could transform the world, this book deals with secrets of Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin, and follows a thread that connects historical documents and locations in Philadelphia, Paris, London, and New York. This novel reminded me of a cross between National Treasure and The DaVinci Code. Author Ben Mezrich, who is a bestselling nonfiction author, does a great job with this fiction narrative too! I’ll say no more…enjoy this read!
Marching Home: Union Veterans and Thei
r Unending Civil War, by Brian Matthew Jordan – I bought this book while on a road-trip in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I’m so glad I did! It is, at once, compelling, haunting, revelatory, and a great read. I was not fully aware of the real struggles that thousands of Union veterans had upon their return from war. Whereas Confederates fought mostly on their own land, literally battling to protect their homes and way of life — which helped them attain heroic stature with Southern civilians — Union vets returned home to a region where the war was mostly abstract and even glorified. The sight of thousands of wounded Union soldiers, many of them amputees, was abhorrent to many Northern civilians, whose desire was to move on from war rather than be constantly reminded of it. Union veterans suffered most from this attitude. This is a book worth reading as yet another stark reminder of the lasting impact of the Civil War.
Taking London: Winston Churchill and the Fight to Save Civilization, by Martin Dugard – Great Britain, summer 1940. The Battle of France is over, and The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Adolf Hitler’s powerful armies have swept across Europe with little resistance and now control most of the continent. England stands alone against the Nazi juggernaut and new Prime Minister Winston Churchill has vowed never to surrender and defeat Germans at all costs. To begin, he must rely on a small group of elite pilots in the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command. This book focuses on the inexplicable bravery of the pilots and the indomitable will of Churchill – together they rallied the British people against all odds to turn the tide against the Nazi menace. Dugard’s follow-up to Taking Paris is a reminder of why Churchill is considered one of the great wartime leaders in all of history. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was reminded again of how “England stood alone” during this critical period early in the war before the U.S. became involved after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Targeted Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror, by JackCarr and James M. Scott – October 23, 1983 – the United States Marine Corps experienced its greatest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima when a terrorist drove a truck packed with explosives into their headquarters and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The horrible attack killed 241 servicemen, continues to influence U.S. foreign policy, and haunts the Marine Corps to this day. Jack Carr, a former Navy SEAL sniper and bestselling fiction author (including the highly acclaimed The Terminal List) and history author James M. Scott do an outstanding job of outlining terrorist factions and activities (the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed six months earlier), politics, and diplomatic and leadership failures that left these brave Marines as sitting ducks with no clear mission in one of the world’s most violent regions. This book was thoughtful and well written, but made me angry at the same time – such a terrible waste of America’s best and bravest.
The Wealth of Shadows (fiction special), by Graham Moore – How can a small group of experts working clandestinely within the U.S. Treasury Department undermine Nazi Germany and defeat the enemy without firing a bullet? Hint: it has something to do with money. This book is full of espionage, deceit, and backroom deals, and – while it’s fiction – it’s based on a true story. The author even provides chapter-by-chapter notes at the end letting readers know what’s real and what he fictionalized. I can’t say too much more –except I loved this book!
The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies, by Jason Fagone – This book tells the story of Elizabeth Smith Friedman, who started her career when she was hired by an eccentric tycoon to find secret messages embedded in Shakespeare’s plays, and who quickly became one of the top codebreakers in the country during World War I. She worked alongside codebreaker Willam Friedman, who later became her husband. The two broke codes during both world wars. Elizabeth especially used her genius to hunt Nazi spies, steal enemy secrets, and help invent the “science” of codebreaking that shaped the course of history. I had not known Elizabeth’s story before reading this book (I had heard of William Friedman, but not Elizabeth) – it’s an amazing tale of an extraordinary woman, and the love she and William shared under the most stressful of circumstances.
The Light of the Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, by Michael Paradis – You may think you know the full story of D-Day and General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in it, but this book may make you think again! Paradis focuses on the sixth months or so leading up to D-Day, including the decision to place Ike in charge of Operation Overlord, and the cross-current of diplomacy, politics, strategy, family, and fame he navigates as the world hangs in the balance and June 6, 1944, approaches. As the dust jacket says: “In a world of giants – Churchill, Roosevelt, DeGaullle, Marshall, MacArthur – it was a barefoot boy from Abiline, Kansas, who would master the art of power and become a modern-day George Washington.” This is a meaty, dramatic read and well worth your time.
Love, Greg & Lauren: A Husband’s Day-by-Day Account of his Wife’s Remarkable Recovery, by Greg Manning – I’ve had this book on my shelf for more than 20 years, and finally read it over the summer. Wish I hadn’t waited so long. Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, Lauren Manning – a wife, the mother of a 10-month-old son, and a senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald – came to work as usual at One World Trade Center. As she stepped into the lobby, a fireball exploded from the elevator shaft and changed her life. High above her, terrorists had crashed a plane into the tower and killed nearly 700 of her colleagues. Lauren was burned over 82 percent of her body. As she struggled to survive, her husband, Greg, began writing a daily e-mail journal to family, friends, and colleagues. He recorded Lauren’s monumental struggle and his own efforts to make sense of what happened to his wife and their family. This book is that e-mail diary. It tells the Lauren Manning journey and medical miracle, and it also offers reminders and details of what it was like in the days and weeks following the September 11 attacks. Now, 23 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this book is as powerful as it was when it published in 2002.
Death and Glory (fiction special), by Will Thomas – It’s the mid 1890s, and a group of former Confederates who want to revive the Confederacy arrive in England seeking a warship promised to the South by the British government during the Civil War thirty years earlier. To make it happen, they’re threatening to reveal Great Britain’s long-secret treaty with the Confederate States of America, which would likely lead to war between England and the United States. Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his partner, Thomas Llewelyn, are hired by the Prime Minister to stop the rogue former Confederates. I can’t give away too much more, but I can say I enjoyed this story very much!
Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese-American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. – This book does a good job of explaining the dynamics of the Japanese-American population on Hawaii prior to and after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, especially how loyal Japanese-American citizens and actual Japanese spies co-existed on the island. The story focuses on how the Navy recruits one Japanese-American spy hunter to track Japanese spies — essentially the beginning of the Naval Intelligence Service, which eventually inspired the NCIS television series (Mark Harmon starred in the series and co-author Leon Carroll, a Marine and former NCIS special agent, is a technical advisor for the show). I did not find this book to be a total page-turner, but it was very interesting and offers a good perspective on the run-up to Pearl Harbor and the effort to hunt Japanese spies before and after the attack.
A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II, by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander – This is a very special book – and IS a page-turner from start to finish. Here’s the problem: Even though it’s nonfiction, I can’t give too much away! Let me set it up this way: in December 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is 21-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay dead or wounded on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a German Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler – he has the bomber dead to rights and can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger. As the book jacket says: “What happened next would defy imagination and later be called the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.” That’s all I can give you without spoiling things – trust me, clear your schedule and read this book!
The Blood of Others (fiction special), b
y Graham Hurley – A spy thriller set during WWII amidst the Allied raid on Dieppe, France in August of 1942. At the heart of the story: Canadian journalist George Hogan; Annie Wrenne, who works at Lord Mountbatten’s cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters; and Abwehr intelligence officer William Schultz. These three characters are linked by Operation Jubilee, the Dieppe raid, when more than 6,000 men stormed heavily defended French beaches nearly two years before D-Day. You’ll really enjoy it!
Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South, by Elizabeth R. Varon – I made notes throughout this excellent book, which focuses on Confederate General James Longstreet’s course change after the Civil War. Longstreet was always considered “Confederate # 3” behind Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. He fought tenaciously for the Confederacy, including side-by-side with Lee at Gettysburg. After the war, though, Longstreet moves to Louisiana and makes one of the most remarkable about-faces in American history. He supported black voting, led the interracial state militia, embraced Reconstruction, and became an outcast in the South. Many white southerners subsequently blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War. Varon recounts this amazing story in a strong narrative way, including Longstreet’s ongoing battle to save his reputation amidst withering criticism — particularly with a narrative that he undermined Lee at Gettysburg.
The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation, by Roger Moorhouse – Anytime I start to think I know all of the major story lines about the Second World War, along comes a compelling book to prove me wrong! The Forgers is one of those, dramatically (and for the first time) recounting the story of a group of Polish diplomats exiled in Sweden who, between 1940-1943, engaged in a wholly remarkable humanitarian operation. Working with Jewish activists, they mastermind a brilliant program of forging passports and other identity documents that were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. I knew nothing of this effort, perhaps not surprising because this is the first book on the topic. I hope you find this book as engrossing as I did!