The following booklist represents a portion of the books available in the Northglenn High School library. For additional books on this topic or related topics, please visit the library or use Destiny to search the collection.

Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Fae of Danger During World War II

940.54 AIK

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses—all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone—even Americans, even women—transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.

In a faraway land, these "spitfires" lived like women decades ahead of their time. Risking their lives in one of the deadliest jobs of the war, they ferried new, barely tested fighters and bombers to air bases and returned shot-up wrecks for repair, never knowing what might go wrong until they were high in the sky. It was exciting, often terrifying work. Spitfires is a vivid, richly detailed account of war, ambition, and a group of remarkable women whose lives were as unconventional as their dreams.

The Russo Ukrainian War: The Return of History

947.708 PLO

Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the all-out assault--on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament--the roots of this conflict can be traced back even earlier, to post-Soviet tensions and imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a broad historical context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia's ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable.

Ukraine, Plokhy argues, has remained central to Russia's idea of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. In a new international environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post-Cold War international order, and a resurgence of populist nationalism, Ukraine is now more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe.

Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II

940.54 MOO

For Americans, World War II began in December 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Europe, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded Poland, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that ensued saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war--blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing--yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.

In Poland 1939 , Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.

Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe—a Memoir, a History, a Warning

940.53 SCH

During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz's German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfe—those who followed the current. Once the war ended, they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich.

While searching old files in her family’s Mannheim basement, Schwarz discovers that her grandfather bought a Jewish-owned business cheaply under Nazi policies, then ignored the surviving family member’s pleas for reparations. This revelation leads her to question her grandparents’ complicity and, more broadly, how ordinary people become entangled in wrongdoing. Interweaving her family’s story with Europe’s postwar reckoning, she examines how denial gave way—at least in Germany—to accepting responsibility, and warns that nations that refuse to confront their past remain susceptible to extremism.

Pacific Crucible: War in the Pacific, 1941-1943

940.54 TOL

On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.

Ian W. Toll's dramatic narrative encompasses both the high command and the "sailor's-eye" view from the lower deck. Relying predominantly on eyewitness accounts and primary sources, Pacific Crucible also spotlights recent scholarship that has revised our understanding of the conflict, including the Japanese decision to provoke a war that few in the country's highest circles thought they could win. The result is a page-turning history that does justice to the breadth and depth of a tremendous subject.

Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis

940.54 LIC

The remarkable story of Fred Mayer, a German-born Jew who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission behind enemy lines. When he was sixteen, his family made the decision to flee to the United States—they were among the last German Jews to escape. In America, Freddy tried enlisting the day after Pearl Harbor, only to be rejected as an "enemy alien" because he was German. He was soon recruited to the OSS, the country's first spy outfit before the CIA. Freddy posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW for months, dispatching reports to the OSS via Hans, holed up with a radio in a nearby attic. The reports contained a gold mine of information, provided key intelligence about the Battle of the Bulge, and allowed the Allies to bomb twenty Nazi trains. On the verge of the Allied victory, Freddy was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and waterboarded for days. Remarkably, he persuaded the region's Nazi commander to surrender, completing one of the most successful OSS missions of the war.

The Handy World War II Answer Book

940.53 EST

The Handy World War II Answer Book' answers over 550 questions about this epic war. It covers the wars in Europe and in the Pacific, plus information on what factors led up to World War II and consequences in the aftermath. Readers will learn about important military and political leaders, heroes (and heroines) and villains, spies, plots, and propaganda, key battles on land and sea, advances in military equipment and weaponry, and strategies planned and carried out by both the Allies and Axis powers.

1939: A People's History of the Coming of the Second World War

940.53 TAY

In the autumn of 1938, Europe believed in the promise of peace. But only a year later, the fateful decisions of just a few men had again led Europe to a massive world war. Drawing on contemporary diaries, memoirs, and newspapers, as well as recorded interviews, 1939 is a narrative account of what the coming of the Second World War felt like to those who lived through it

Men of the 65th: The Borinqueneers of the Korean War

951.904 AIK

Men of the 65th explores the history of the 65th Infantry Regiment, known as the Borinqueneers, the only segregated Latino unit in the United States Army. The book chronicles the Borinqueneers' history through several wars—including World War I, II, and Korea—but also comments on the time in 1952 when ninety-one Borinqueneers were arrested and tried for disobeying orders and desertion during the Korean War.

Task Force Hogan: The World War II Tank Battalion that Spearheaded the Liberation of Europe

940.54 HOG

The story of Samuel Hogan, one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the U.S. Army during World War II, who led the Third Armored Division on the front lines of Normandy into Germany. Task Force Hogan explores how the battalion's actions led to the capturing of the first German city in the name of Allied forces and the liberation of Europe. Includes never-before-seen letters, military dispatches, journal entries, and interviews with surviving family of the Task Force.

The Israel-Hamas War

956.94 MAR

In October 2023 fighters from the Hamas militant group in the Gaza territory crossed over into neighboring Israel where they attacked civilians, ultimately killing some 1,200 people while kidnapping nearly 230 Israelis and taking them back to Gaza as hostages. The incident touched off the Israel-Hamas War in which Israel used its formidable military to attack Gaza. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians lost their lives in the conflict. The Israel-Hamas War is the latest conflict in the long history of hostility between Israelis and Palestinians, sparking intense divisions across the globe as political leaders and citizens debate the justification for the harsh Israeli response.

Our Enemies will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence

947.7086 TRO

Chronicles journalist Yaroslav Trofimov's experiences on the front lines of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and highlights the resistance efforts of everyday Ukrainians that have taken part in Ukraine's war for independence. Details the defense of Kyiv, the destruction of Mariupol and the failed peace negotiations in Istanbul. Includes color photographs and maps.

The Shortest History of War: From Hunter-Gatherers to Nuclear Superpowers—A Retelling for Our Time

355 DYE

War has changed, but we have not. From our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the rival nuclear powers of today, whenever resources have been contested, we've gone to battle. Acclaimed historian Gwynne Dyer illuminates our many martial clashes in this brisk account, tracing warfare from prehistory to the world's first cities—and onto the thousand-year "classical age" of combat. For all our advanced technology and hyperconnected global society, we find ourselves once again on the brink as climate change heightens competition for resources and superpowers stand ready with atomic bombs, drones, and futuristic "autonomous" weapons in development.

Genocide

304.6 SPR

At the end of the Second World War, with the establishment of the United Nations, the holding of the Nuremberg Trials, and the adoption of the Genocide Convention, the international community assured itself that genocide would never happen again. But never again has become a meaningless phrase.

This book asks why. It also asks, where has it happened in the past? Who is being threatened today? And what can we do to prevent this terrible crime from recurring?

The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagres Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets and Helped Win World War II

920 FLE

Bletchley Park was a well-kept secret during World War II, operating under the code name Station X. The critical work of code-cracking Nazi missives that went on behind its closed doors could determine a victory or loss against Hitler's army. Amidst the brilliant cryptographers, flamboyant debutantes, and absent-minded professors working there, it was teenaged girls who kept Station X running. Some could do advanced math, while others spoke a second language. They ran the unwieldy bombe machines, made sense of wireless sound waves, and sorted the decoded messages. They were expected to excel in their fields and most importantly: know how to keep a secret.

Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan

940.54 DAV

Tracks the stories of the men of the "Devil Dogs," who fought in some of the very first and very last battles of American involvement in World War II—from the first attacks on the beaches of Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands in August of 1942 all the way to the fall of Okinawa in June of 1945.

The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II

940.54 MAC

Chronicles the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad, highlighting how a small garrison of Russian soldiers stopped German forces from capturing "Pavlov's House," a key strategic building in the heart of the city, which was situated on the front line and code-named "The Lighthouse." The Lighthouse of Stalingrad examines how the battle ended and influenced the conclusion of the siege of Stalingrad, and discusses the impact this battle had on the eventual outcome of the war.

Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust

920 SWA

Profiles nine women who risked their own lives to save others during the Holocaust as leaders, rescuers, and spies. Highlights how many of them made it their life goal to preserve personal accounts of the Holocaust for future generations. Includes black-and-white illustrations, a timeline, a glossary, and additional resources.

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration

940.53 PAR

Three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Families, teachers, farm workers—all were ordered to leave behind their homes, their businesses, and everything they owned. Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced to live under hostile conditions in incarceration camps, their futures uncertain. This important work features powerful images of the Japanese American incarceration captured by three photographers—Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams—along with firsthand accounts of this grave moment in history.