NCW Libraries

Reviews ten decisions made by six major leaders between May 1940 and December 1941 that reshaped human destiny, from Churchill's war cabinet's choice to continue fighting after the German blitzkrieg defeat of France to Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.

A sobering chronicle of war as well as a tribute to soldiers' perseverance in the face of its horrors that draws upon soldiers' memoirs, psychological studies, and oral histories to show that - regardless of the enemy, terrain, training, or weaponry - combat soldiers' wartime experiences remain fundamentally the same. Publisher Fact Sheet. Annotation. Kindsvatter takes readers inside the minds of soldiers from World War I through Vietnam, revealing...

More than 150 Germans contributed to this fascinating oral history of the Second World War, which gives first-hand accounts of what it was like to watch and participate in the rise of Hitler, to endure the peril of the seas in a U-boat, to fight and watch men die, and to suffer through bombings at Dresden and Hamburg.

In Europe on Trial, acclaimed historian Istvan Deak presents the comparative history of collaboration, retribution, and resistance during World War II. Deak explores these three themes through the Western and Eastern European countries that suffered at the hands of German military occupation. The occupied countries had to face the question of whether to cooperate with their German occupiers, try to survive the war without any political involvement,...

The amazing story of Corrie ten Boom, a heroine of the Dutch Resistance who helped Jews escape from the Nazis and became one of the most remarkable evangelists of the 20th century, is told in her classic memoir, now repackaged for a new generation.

"When America entered World War II in 1941, [it] faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks, for troops to carry...

"The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese-American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation's history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American. Nearly all Americans...

"'War is the locomotive of history,' claimed Trotsky, a remark thought to acknowledge the opportunity the First World War offered the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia 1917. And here Peter Clarke uses it on a broader canvas to explore how war, rather than socioeconomic forces or individuals, is the prime mover of history. Twentieth-century warfare, based on new technologies and mass armies, saw the locomotive power of war geared up to an unprecedented...