(Recommendations at the bottom. If you have a favorite you don’t see listed, post it in the comments.) Known as “Operation Dynamo,” the evacuation at Dunkirk began on May 26, 1940, saving 338,000 Allied troops from the German juggernaut. On June 4, Prime Minister Winston Churchill took to the floor of the House of Commons […]
Book Review | Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne
2015-11-22 · by ·
Fascinating and with the touch of a master storyteller’s hand, if there’s one history I will recommend this Christmas season, it will be Alistair Horne’s Hubris: the Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century. Interesting and accessible, Horne’s approach is a narrative that doesn’t merely tell a story, but also examines hubris in the tides […]
Book Review | The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today by Thomas E. Ricks
2015-09-07 · by ·
If there’s one book that I find myself recommending more than most lately, it’s Thomas Ricks’ survey and analysis of US generals from World War II to the present. With an eye to examining why history has been so kind to the men who led the US Army during that war, but less so to […]
Review | Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
2013-05-16 · by ·
There was a moment when reading Mitchell Zuckoff‘s latest book, Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II, that I crossed over from a mildly interested reader to a rabid page turner. I’m pretty sure it was in the first chapter, if not the […]
Review | Lost in Shangri-la by Mitchell Zuckoff
2013-01-23 · by ·
In the closing months of World War II, twenty-four serviceman and WACs climbed aboard a military transport plane for a day of sightseeing over a recently discovered “hidden valley” deep in the interior of Dutch New Guinea. Surrounded by high, jungle covered mountains and far from civilization, the valley was home to natives undiscovered by […]
Review | Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
2012-03-31 · by ·
Synopsis from Goodreads: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared. A young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, struggled to a life raft and pulled himself aboard. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, […]
