Related Non-Fiction Titles for RARI 2010
(Note: RC = Recorded Books; BR = Braille; DB = Digital Books)
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World War II
Note: There are SO MANY good titles about World War II, its intrigues and tragedies, that it was difficult picking only a few. The following titles are just a sampling and all are highly recommended.

The Second World War by John Keegan (Penguin, 2005 (rep).
Keegan has made his reputation writing about the Second World War and is considered one of the best. His basic history is a wonderful starting point for anyone interested in an authoritative overview.

Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock (Harper, 1971)
This book is also highly recommended as one of the best on Hitler and his rise to power. Another classic is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (Simon & Schuster, 1960). Shirer was a foreign correspondent for the Universal News Service and CBS and had access to a monumental amount of wartime documentation. His book is considered the classic about Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Studs Terkel is a master at interviewing people and his oral history, The Good War (Pantheon, 1984) brings in a personal aspect that is both heartwarming and heart rending. Another, more recent oral history is Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections (Random House, 1999).

Life with the Enemy by Werner Rings (Doubleday, 1982) looks at the people fighting the war who were not soldiers. Its subtitle, Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler's Europe, 1939-1945, indicates the focus of this wartime narrative.

The only book I could find that was readily available on the war specifically on the Channel Islands was Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule by Madeleine Bunting, (Random House UK, 2004).

And by Rhode Island’s own World War II scholar, Dr. Judith Barrett Litoff of Bryant University:

An American Heroine In The French Resistance : The Diary And Memoir Of Virginia D'Albert-Lake New York : Fordham University Press, 2006.

American Women In A World At War : Contemporary Accounts From World War II Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources, 1997. Dear Boys : World War II Letters From A Woman Back HomeJackson : University Press of Mississippi, c1991.

Miss You : The World War II Letters Of Barbara Wooddall Taylor And Charles E. TaylorAthens : University of Georgia Press, c1990.

Since You Went Away : World War II Letters From American Women On The Home Front / New York : Oxford University Press, 1991.

We're In This War Too : World War II Letters From American Women In Uniform New York : Oxford University Press, 1994.

Holocaust
Note: As with books about World War II, good books about the Holocaust are numerous. The following three are just the tip of the iceberg.

Saul Friedlander has written an exhaustive and complex study in two volumes entitled Nazi Germany and the Jews.volume 2 is The Years of Extermination. This is not light reading but a painstaking history of a black period in world history.

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn (HarperCollins, 2006) chronicles Mendelsohn’s personal search for 6 members of his family who disappeared into the camps. Coincidentally, it is letters, written by his grandfather in 1939, that started Daniel on his journey through history.

Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees (Public Affairs, 2005) contains a chapter on the effect of the occupation on Guernsey and the Channel Islands.

Books about the Channel Islands

The following titles offer histories, customs and pictures of the Channel Islands.

The Other British Isles by David W. Moore (McFarland, 2005)

Great Britain by David Else (Lonely Planet, 2009) – This general guide to GB contains a chapter on the Channel Islands.

Evacuation of Children during the war
Who Will Take Our Children? by Carlton Jackson (McFarland, 2008)

No Time to Wave Goodbye by Ben Wicks (St. Martins, 1988)

Which brings us to books about book clubs and reading

As with books about World War II, books about how to start and run a book club are plenteous. Less plenteous are books about the effect of book clubs on people’s lives. Here are a few you might like to try.

A Year of Reading: A Month-by-Month Guide to Classics and Crowd Pleasers for You and Your Book Group by Elisabeth Ellington (Sourcebooks, 2002)

Reader’s Choice: 200 Book Club Favorites Victoria Golden McMains (Morrow, 2000)

Read It and Eat: A Month-by-Month Guide to Scintillating Book Club Selections and Mouth Watering Menus by Sarah Gardner (Hudson St Press, 2005)

Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s Greatest Hits by Jack Murnighan (Crown Publishing, 2009). Cruising through a list of 50 “classics” Murnighan entices you to give them a try, because, as he says, “Anna Karenina is a beach read…Dickens is hilarious, [and] the Iliad’s battle scenes rival Hollywood’s for gore.”

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor Thomas C. Foster (Quill Publishing, 2003) helps you to discern and distinguish while you read.

And finally, let’s not forget Reading Lolita in Tehranby Azar Nafisi, another riveting testimonial to the power of reading and reading groups in the midst of oppression and censorship.

Epistolary Non-Fiction
My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams (Belknap/Harvard Univ. Press, 2007)

War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars (Scribner, 2001)

Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War (Doubleday, 2007)