History -- Europe from I Cannot Live Without Books

Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940 - 1945 by Ronald C. Rosbottom THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Many adapted to the situation -- even allied themselves with their new overlords. Yet… Read more about this item

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing into the forbidding Biatowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods -- through brutal winters, typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids -- until they were liberated… Read more about this item

"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself": The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945 by Florian Huber By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and the invasion was nearly complete. As the Soviet army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. Many Germans felt there was nothing left but disgrace and despair. Tor… Read more about this item

The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union From Ruin by Douglas Smith After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, cooperation between the United States and Russia is difficult to imagine -- and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but… Read more about this item

When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horror of war to find that a new world greeted them -- one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang… Read more about this item

The Liberation of Paris: How Eisenhower, De Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light by Jean Edward Smith THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. Following their breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine… Read more about this item

St. Petersburg: Madness, Murder, and Art on the Banks of the Neva by Jonathan Miles St. Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, rising from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic… Read more about this item

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons.… Read more about this item

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele As early as the third century, St. Maurice -- an Egyptian -- became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion. Ever since there have been richly varied encounters between those defined as "Africans" and those called "Europeans." Yet Africans and African Europeans are still widely believed to be only a recent presence in… Read more about this item

The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance by Simon R. Doubleday "If I had been present at the Creation," the thirteenth-century Spanish philosopher-king Alfonso X is said to have stated, "many faults in the universe would have been avoided." Known as El Sabio, "the Wise," Alfonso was renowned by friends and enemies alike for… Read more about this item

When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance by Michael S. Neiberg According to U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the Fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American response… Read more about this item

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men -- Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication -- whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod,… Read more about this item

In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire by Laurence Bergreen Secretly dispatched by Queen Elizabeth to circumnavigate the globe and later called upon to save England from the Spanish Armada, Francis Drake was a hot-tempered, red-haired rogue who made his reputation by plundering and pillaging his way to the ends of… Read more about this item

The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power by Peter Ross Range THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, butsting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an improbable political journey that came close… Read more about this item

Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche Amid the ravages of economic depression, everyday Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both Left and Right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany transformed from a deeply divided republic into a one-party Nazi dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, Peter Fritzsche offers a… Read more about this item

Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War by Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked -- and… Read more about this item

The Normans: Power, Conquest & Culture in 11th-Century Europe by Judith A. Green In the eleventh century, the European climate was improving, the population was growing, and people were on the move. The Norman dynasty spread from Byzantium to England, led by men who achieved lasting fame like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard. These figures cultivated an image of unstoppable… Read more about this item

Empires of the Normans: Conquerors of Europe by Levi Roach October 16th, 1066. As Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxion king of England, lay dying in Susses, the Duke of Normandy was celebrating an unlikely victory. William "the Bastard" had emerged from interloper to successor to the English throne. He had survived the carnage of the Battle of Hasting and, two months… Read more about this item

Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany by James Wyllie Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann -- these names were synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men -- complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by… Read more about this item

The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europeby Mark Mazower As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still… Read more about this item