Favorite World War II books?

[parusski]

LES, try something harder for trivia. Kay Summersby was on Ike's staff. But I do not believe the rumors of their love affair are true. Dodya, dasvadonya

[melcer]

Originally posted by Greg McCarty:
My favorite continues to be:

Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier."

Read it several times. Wrote an extensive paper on it in college. Its one that is hard to forget.

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I agree.
It's one of the most unforgetable books I've ever read and tell how terrible the war was for the simple soldier on the russian front. It also mention how terrible it can be to be on the losing side.
I highly recommend it to everyone who want to read about the terrible experience of war on the russian front.

Melcer

[achappelle]

I recently read a book, "Maple Leaf at WAr", don't have it in front of me so I don't know the author off hand, but it has excellent accounts of every action canadians took part in WW2. Also, one of WBs picks, "6 Armies in Normandy" by Keegan was excellent.

[Supervisor]

I kinda like William Shirer's "The rise and fall of the 3rd Reich".
Very in depth.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Had a chance to wander down this thread more liesurely, noticed that my favourite books by the collective title Combat: and a further description such as Germany had been missed. (warning Les is able to babble again as usual hehe)

The Combat series has outstanding collections of short stories. I have 4 titles from WW2 as well as one from WW1. They are really impressive. I was able to find them as the original paperback as well as a reprinted larger format paperback for 2 of the WW2 titles.

One thing that always strikes me though. All my older books are sure getting faded. It might not be well known to the forum, but a great many older paperbacks were made using paper that has a finite shelf life. They become increasingly brittle. It saddens me that they will likely not live much longer than me. Have always spent a bit of effort wondering if I should spend any concern trying to preserve my little bit of the past. Bugs me to know that when I die my precious collection might not interest anyone. I know the local library will take one look at them and assume they are not in good enough shape to accept. But when I am gone, will it matter. I just hope some of my hobbies mean something to at least some of my family eh.

One thing I am grateful for, living in Canada I have perhaps the best chance to learn about the Second World War. That even includes the US guys. I have noticed that we are neither influenced by previously restrictive access to information as in the at one time Iron Courtain countries that for so many years were hardly sources of information, nor quite the US market, which to be fair is certainly not a bad source of information, but has for years been afraid to credit anything to the Russians (can only credit this to anti commie hysteria, which is predictable). I think that was a run on sentence sorry about that. Our media though is almost a clone of American media due to you guys having a major influence in our book industry.

It is great that in todays world, we are seeing more and more that the Old World and Russia are learning to deal with freedom of information, and access to information. And that the media here are no longer dominated by suspicions of anyone that displays any interest of what was once "the other side" through out the cold war.

One significant detail I have noticed is the death of the WW3 genre (and I dont miss it either, nor cold war stress). I had numerous games based on WW3 topics, all quite useless now in my opinion. I have been more and more unable to dedicate any interest to events past Korea.
This perhaps explains why I have zero interest in any software depicting modern events. All of my literature purchases in the last 10 years have been to some extent all WW2 topics. And I have noticed that WW2 board games have been increasing in the last few years (increasing is a relative term, it is after all a very niche intensive market, hardly high volume oriented).

[Eric Bondura]

I have to agree with "Stalingrad" by Anthony Beevor and "Fighting in Hell".
Also check out "OstFront" by Charles Winchester, published by Osprey Press. It is an excellent overview of the Eastern Front with information not only on the operational activities but also such things as production figures, maps, and extensive footnotes. As with all books in the Osprey History series it is very well illustrated.
Osprey also publishes an excellent series on individual campaigns, such as Kursk and Operation Bagration (destruction of Army Group Center).
Well worth the investment.

[Galka]

Originally posted by AbsntMndedProf:
For a good non-fiction book on the Eastern front, I like 'Hitler Moves East: 1941-1943' by Paul Carell.

Eric Maietta

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Does anyone have a copy of this book for sale?

galka@home.com

[ September 16, 2001: Message edited by: Galka ]</p>

[JTGEN]

Best fact book is a series(translated from ?) of 6 heavy books giving good cronological coverage of the war, with interesting details of the weapons and a lot of pictures(good for a kid as I was when I read it).

I have not read much fiction but my favorite is Norman Mailers The naked and the dead.

If somebody wonders why a finn does not say Tuntematon sotilas(the unknown soldier, not translated to english?), the reason is simple. After seeing the great movie more than once, reading seemed pretty useless. But usually books are bettr than the movie and therefore I must assume Tuntematon is as great as it is told to be.

[SkyVon]

If I may make a shameless plug for a friend and fellow flight-sim squadmate, I would strongly recommend Eric Bergerud's two books on the South Pacific war. His first covers the land aspect and his second the air. Eric is currently working on the book 3 which covers the naval war.

Eric has also won the Marine Corps book of the year award for one (he has two) of his books on Vietnam.

His writting style is easy to read and loaded with many interesting stories told from those that were actually there.

Give them a read!