Hi, Peggy:

You've come to the right place.

Of all the books we have looked at concerning the two most important if not the most inept conflicts of the 20th Century (close to ten percent of the world's population dead or permanently damaged; incomprehensible ruination of the lands and the oceans between the warring parties; all presaging the permanent and grossly expensive militaristic states of the 21st Century built on the warring bones of the old) we've found a few volumes that convey the lurid international game once known as "World War."

We should mention that despite the wide-spread destruction, the very phrase "World War" is egoistic if not solipsistic: half of the population of the world did not care to participate in the mostly European-inspired insults and shoot-'em-ups that inspired these depredations).

Also, since most historians with bat-brains consider World War One and World War Two essentially one conflagration --- briefly characterized by a sword-rattling intermission of twenty years --- we need not differentiate between WWI and WWII.

At the top of the list, we put David Kennedy's terrific study that interested you, The American People In World War II.

Then there's Eyewitness to World War II, Unforgettable Stories and Photographs from History's Greatest Conflict.

A fine but neglected history, by Paul De Groot, entitled simply The First World War is short, pithy and well worth the time and trouble necessary to find it.

In Flanders Fields --- The 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff will give you a taste (if that is the right word) for trench warfare,

And finally, there's Christabel Bielenberg's moving When I Was A German, An English Woman Living in Nazi Germany. This one lets the reader learn how one English woman managed to survive in Nazi Germany for six years.

These are the best of the best --- but your question has inspired us to go through all the War Books we have reviewed, or taken readings from, over the last twenty years. We will, in the next issue, list them as the month's key collection, the very first item we put at the top of the home page.

--- Lolita Lark,
Ed.