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.
World War II Memoirs: Peril in the Pacific
World War II Memoirs: Peril in the Pacific
A teenage boy slowly starves to death in an internment camp. A jungle fighter prays for deliverance as he is dragged underwater. A Marine is nearly buried alive in the volcanic sand of Bloody Iwo.
In this salute to a fading generation, award-winning journalist Joseph David Cress presents a collection of memories from eyewitnesses of World War II in the Pacific. Through its pages, you will experience the fury of the Kamikaze, a punishing attack by depth charges, a frantic escape from a sinking battleship, and a crossfire by nervous troops in the wake of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack.
The eyewitnesses profiled in this book include a Pearl Harbor survivor, an Army engineer, a Navy patrol plane pilot, a submariner, a carrier crewman and a Marine who fought on Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. This book gives readers the flexibility of either following the war stories of each eyewitness from start to finish or reading those memories that pertain to topics of interest. There is also a chronology that arranges the stories in the order in which the memories took place.