Historical Non-Ficton

If you want to read a memoir about World War I. I found Storm of Steele by Ernst Jünger to be particularly interesting. It is very different from most war stories as instead of painting the war as a futile waste of young men’s lives Jünger instead writes of the war as a valiant hero who embraced combat and brotherhood in spite of the horror. The work not only provides for an under-represented perspective of the War, but it also gives insight into the German sentiment that they were never actually defeated in the First World War.

*Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization* by Richard Miles

*The Mongol Art of War* by Timothy May

*Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe* by John Julius Norwich

*The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History* by Bret Witter and Robert M. Edsel

*Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis* by Robert M. Edsel

*King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa* by Adam Hochschild

*The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness* by John Waller

*The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum* by James Gardner

*Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane* by Andrew Graham-Dixon

*Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society: America’s Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective Who Brought Them to Justice* by Victoria Bruce and William Oldfield

**Churchill’s Secret Warriors** *Damien Lewis* is about the Small Scale Raiding Force, a group of secret operatives who were tasked with striking behind Nazi lines, eschewing all previously held rules of war, during WWII.

**Colditz** *Ben Macintyre* tells the true story of the men captured as POWs and sentenced to serve out the remainder of the war in the notorious Colditz Castle.

**We Die Alone** *David Howarth* is about a Norwegian Commando and his epic escape from Nazi-controlled Norway after the rest of his team is ambushed and killed.