A Wednesday Wishlist: War

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Me and my WWII obsession again. 🙂 There are so many great books out there, both fiction and non-fiction. I usually prefer the non-fiction WWII books,  but as you can see here there are some great fiction choices that cannot be passed up. I also added in a modern day war story because the story really intrigues me and it is very highly rated.

Here is my current wishlist of war literature:

“American Sniper“ by Chris Kyle
From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him “The Legend”; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.
Rated: 4.5 on amazon.com

 


“All The Light We Cannot See”
by Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See is a novel written by American author Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner on May 6, 2014. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Rated: 4.6 on amazon.com

 

 

“The Nazi Officer’s Wife” Edith H. Beer
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith’s protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.
Rated: 4.6 on amazon.com

Each of these  books is extremely well reviewed, and sound like great stories that I will love. Also together they make a versatile montage, which keeps it interesting. Now I just need more free time so I can start checking some of these off my list!

Do you have any WWII books that you can’t wait to get your hands on?

70 thoughts on “A Wednesday Wishlist: War”

  3. I have a total WWII obsession too. I just finished “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. Really really good, definitely recommend it for a true WWII story that I don’t think most people know too much about (myself included).

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  9. I’m planning to read ‘Der Krieg hat kein weibliches Gesicht’ as my book representing Russia. It’s by Svetlana Alexijewitsch, the title translates ‘War has no female face’ or ‘War’s unwomaly face’. Already read the sample on my Kindle, it’s promising!

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  12. I just can’t help myself recommending Nevile Shute, especially ‘Most Secret’. This is one of my favourite books ever: a very English take on the war, of course, well plotted as always. He is very much out of fashion, even here, but I love him. ‘A Town Like Alice’ is probably his best known WW2 novel.

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  15. I’m also a big fan of reading about WWII. I actually focused a lot of my graduate work on that era in time, though I looked mostly at cultural history. One of the books I really enjoyed in that vein was Wine and War by Donald Kladstrup. It’s a really interesting account of the lengths that French citizens and winemakers went to in order to protect their country’s wine. Some of their actions were punishable by death; the French people value their wine so much that they were willing to die for it! There’s a lot more to the story than that, but it’s a really great read.

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  16. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It is set in Germany during World War II. It is marketed here at YA fiction but that wasn’t actually the author’s intent. Another one that I enjoyed is City of Thieves. That one is set in Russia. Both are novels, not about the war, but about what life was like at the time.

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  17. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Survival and resilience of WWII prisoners. Based on the true story of Louie Zamperini. I was completely engaged with this book. I went through the gamut of emotions reading it: awe, shock, cheers, tears, disgust, anger, hope. . . And questions remain about conscience , forgiveness, humanity, redemption. How does one return to life again after so much death. At the end of Night by Elie Wiesel, another WWII book, Elie looks at himself, the survivor, in the mirror and sees a corpse looking back at him.
    I haven’t wanted to watch the movie version of Unbroken yet. Maybe someday…

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  18. I’m on a WWII kick right now, too! I just recently read Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray (both by Ruta Sepetys). So, so, so good. I’ve read All the Light We Cannot See, which is also phenomenal. Haven’t read American Sniper. I don’t usually read modern war books, I tend to stick to historical wars, like WWII and WWI.

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  19. I loved All the Light–really beautiful. City of Women by David Gillham is an extraordinary book that focuses on women in Berlin during WWII and the choices that ordinary people make. it is a book that I could not stop thinking about after I read it a few years ago.

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  20. All the light we cannot see…was really good. As was Book Thief, which I’m guessing you’ve read already? I’ve been meaning to get my hands on ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, This way to the Gas Chamber’ but it’s hard to come by

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  22. I cannot recommend All the Light We Cannot See highly enough!!! It was so good! I had to get together with a friend to talk about it! Another good one is The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer.

    I’m a bit WWII obsessed myself!

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  27. I loved Code Name Verity. Stephen Ambrose did a great job explaining the war and what it was like to be a soldier in Citizen Soldier, non-fiction that read like fiction, and the same with his book Band of Brothers, which was made into a series available on DVD. I am very interested in WWII as well–lost my uncle on the Siegfried Line, and my father served as well.

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