100 Books Like Darkest Hour

When I was secretly working as an escort, living and working ‘underground’, and came upon this book, I was immediately drawn in because here, too, despite and thankfully many different circumstances, was a woman witnessing and taking notes not only to keep herself sane but also to bear witness to the real events as they affected women in this terrible and extraordinary moment in history.

Instead of events and general washes of the main players, as is so often what we get when studying a period of history, here was a true, authentic voice of the actual effects and aftermath of the war on the people living through it. And she wrote it as it was being lived! …” with nothing but a pencil stub, writing by candlelight since Berlin had no electricity…”

As the author, she chose to remain anonymous to protect herself. This choice resonated with me until… show more.

Abraham Lincoln is the subject of hundreds of books, but no historian has ever before explored his role specifically as Commander-in-Chief and how he not only grew into that role but triumphed at it. Well-read in military strategy and possessing a sophisticated grasp of strategy itself, Lincoln was all too often way ahead of his dithering generals who failed to take advantage of their successes with an eye toward bringing the war to an earlier conclusion. With a very hands-on approach, Abraham Lincoln persisted in pushing the army always to do more, to be more, while learning from battlefield mistakes in ways many of his generals seemed incapable of. Despite tragic losses and many missed opportunities, Lincoln never gave up or gave in, and never lost his compassion, either, for the soldiers in the field.

Eden Wallace’s husband is dead and she’s deeply phobic about the dark, but she’s going to take the northern Michigan vacation he planned for them anyway — at a "sky park" where there’s no light pollution at night to keep you from seeing the spectacular starry skies. The dream turns into a nightmare when she becomes the prime suspect in a grotesque murder and subsequently suffers unexpected torments.  Rader-Day delivers a fiendishly clever plot and there are truly superb twists along the way. This is finely wrought crime fiction with great psychological depth. The dialogue is natural all the way through, the characters are beautifully individualized, and the author deftly builds tension while taking us deep into the heart of Eden’s grief. All of that makes her eventual triumph over both circumstances and her crippling fear truly unforgettable.

I am a wee bit obsessed with mysteries. This is my genre of choice for vacations, plane rides, and the occasional lazy afternoon. And I love the way that Barbara Neely blends a classic whodunnit with the topic of gender equality. Barbara Neely, who is now deceased, left the world with a gem of a 4-book series about Blanche White, who is a domestic worker by profession—and an accidental sleuth on the side.

But what I love most about this series is the way Neely weaves huge issues like misogyny, racism, classism, and violence through her story while delivering a smart, page-turning mystery. In her own words, “fiction is a good place to do activism.” 

This well-written book taught me a great deal about WW2. I especially appreciated learning more about Mary Churchill, Winston’s youngest daughter, who was seventeen at the start of the war. The author obtained access to her diaries, and he quotes from them often, so I got a feel for the life of a young woman in society during wartime. Mary had a conscience and good insights and became a main character in this historical book.

It’s not a novel, but at times it reads like one.  

Left-wing historian Ponting has his detractors for what many regarded as a critical revisionist approach to Churchill’s life. However, there is no denying the depth of his research. Furthermore, far from coming over as an overt critic, his study is far more balanced than often thought.

Speaking of which, this is the first of a two-volume biography of Wellington and is no doubt the most exhaustive and the most up-to-date biography of the man and his career. I’ve personally always found Wellington to be a fairly unlikeable character and there is nothing in this biography that made me change my mind. However, Muir’s familiarity with the sources and the archives enables him to integrate the personal, the military, and the political into this thorough examination of the man that ultimately defeated Napoleon.

Impressively researched, elegantly written, and sprinkled with dry humor, Moore’s account is an even-handed portrait of a remarkable woman who turned her sex and her humble background from handicaps into assets, and used her outstanding political skills to become a driving force in twentieth-century British history.  The author addresses his polarizing subject’s inconsistencies, and her bizarre yet conventional personality, to present a multidimensional picture of Britain’s first female prime minister.

Roberts, a prolific historian and biographer, provides Churchill's best one-volume life. The author’s mastery of the material and his access to previously unavailable sources make this portrayal both definitive and comprehensive.

Chapter after chapter, Roberts captures the many different dimensions of a life like no other. The book’s energetic prose mirrors its animated subject.

In muscular prose that foreshadows his later writing, Churchill chronicles the drama of his first quarter-century. He devotes much of the memorable narrative to his military derring-do in far-off lands of the British Empire at the end of the 19th century.

What Tennyson, in his poem Ulysses, called the “delight of battle” can be seen throughout Churchill’s adventures. Combat is exhilarating and dangerous at the same time.