World War II (1931-1945)
“The Second World War presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it.” — Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” (1957)
Of the endless ocean of books on the Second World War, we have dozens and dozens of new and carefully chosen titles. I define it as beginning with the Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria and ending with not only V-E and V-J Days but also the immediate crises of displaced people, the Soviet Union’s creation of the Iron Curtain, and the growing revelations of the extent of the Holocaust.
In significant ways the Second World War was the defining crucible of the 20th Century. The First World War was prelude, the legacy of the 19th Century’s imperialism, and the Cold War was the sequel. Of the making of books about it there is no end — but the persistence of good research and good writing, and good publication underscores the war’s centrality of the world we live in today and the world our descendents will live in for the foreseeable future.
Cornelius Ryan: The Longest Day (D-Day June 6, 1944), a Bridge Too Far
Cornelius Ryan: The Longest Day (D-Day June 6, 1944), a Bridge Too Far
A veteran journalist fascinated by the experiences of ordinary people caught up in fear and crisis, Cornelius Ryan combined exhaustive research with a novelist's gift for storytelling in his brilliant World War II classics The Longest Day (1959) and A Bridge Too Far (1974). For each book Ryan interviewed or corresponded with hundreds of military veterans and civilian participants, weaving their individual stories together in books at once epic in scale and intimate in focus. A visit to the Normandy beaches in 1949 inspired Ryan to write a book about D-Day, a task that took a decade to complete. The Longest Day is a democratic history in which American paratrooper John Steele, hanging from a church steeple in the midst of battle, and German infantryman Josef Hèager, trapped inside a besieged bunker, share the stage with top commanders General Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Ryan captures the nervous anticipation felt by Allied servicemen and French civilians as they await the signal for the invasion; chronicles the confused German response to the Allied onslaught; and provides cinematic depictions of the grim battle for Ste.-Máere-âEglise, the desperate assault on the Merville battery, and the bloody struggle to get off Omaha Beach. In Ryan's tragic masterpiece A Bridge Too Far (1974), Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's uncharacteristically bold plan to end the war in 1944 by crossing the Rhine in Holland sets in motion the greatest airborne assault in history. Ryan narrates with consummate skill the heartbreaking hour-by-hour unraveling of Operation Market Garden as the Allied offensive encounters unexpected German resistance, precipitating a series of merciless battles fought in the Dutch countryside and the shattered streets of Nijmegen and Arnhem. Written as Ryan was fighting his own private battle with cancer, A Bridge Too Far is an unforgettable story of physical and mental suffering, bewildering confusion, stubborn endudurance, and unyielding.