Here are 100 books that Lord of All the Dead fans have personally recommended if you like Lord of All the Dead. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria

Jonathan Spyer Author Of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From my list on the human impact of war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and journalist. I grew up in London’s Jewish community, and lived in Israel and Jerusalem for most of my life. I'm fascinated by the Mid-East region, its history, religions, music, cultures, and colors, and by Jewish history. As a result of my experiences as a soldier in the Second Lebanon War of 2006, and the Second Intifada of 2000-4, my focus on conflict became central to my work. After the 2006 war, I became a conflict reporter, and I've covered war and insurgency in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Israel/West Bank/Gaza for a variety of publications. I also like to focus on the ways war and conflict impact human lives.   

Jonathan's book list on the human impact of war

Jonathan Spyer Why Jonathan loves this book

The definitive account so far of the Syrian civil war, and of the insurgency against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad.  Sam Dagher combines a literary sensibility, deep knowledge of Syria, and acquaintance with the people on the ground, and an ability for tireless and dogged reporting and truth-seeking. The passages dealing with the Assad regime’s slaughter of arrested civilians in its jails are harrowing and are a reminder of the horrifying nature of this regime and the need for it to remain isolated and under pressure. At the same time, Dagher remains a cool and dispassionate analyst of the progress of the conflict, and of the factors which enabled the regime and its allies to prevail.  

By Sam Dagher ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Assad or We Burn the Country as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. Drawing on exclusive interviews with…


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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of Magic Seeds

Jonathan Spyer Author Of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From my list on the human impact of war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and journalist. I grew up in London’s Jewish community, and lived in Israel and Jerusalem for most of my life. I'm fascinated by the Mid-East region, its history, religions, music, cultures, and colors, and by Jewish history. As a result of my experiences as a soldier in the Second Lebanon War of 2006, and the Second Intifada of 2000-4, my focus on conflict became central to my work. After the 2006 war, I became a conflict reporter, and I've covered war and insurgency in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Israel/West Bank/Gaza for a variety of publications. I also like to focus on the ways war and conflict impact human lives.   

Jonathan's book list on the human impact of war

Jonathan Spyer Why Jonathan loves this book

Naipaul was one of the greatest English language writers of the last century, in my view. In this novel he traces the fortunes of one Willie Chandran, an Indian resident in the UK, who makes his way to India to join a rural Maoist insurgency against the Indian authorities. The book is a fascinatingly original description of and take on insurgent warfare, fascinating precisely because Naipaul is not a writer especially interested in war, or the usual themes that govern literary treatments of it. As a result, the parts of the book dealing with the insurgency succeed in a masterful and haunting description of the people involved and the conditions they are facing, while entirely avoiding the pitfalls of both sentimentality and cliché.  

By V.S. Naipaul ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Magic Seeds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s magnificent Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied and self-destructively naive protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life.
Having left a wife and a livelihood in Africa, Willie is persuaded to return to his native India to join an underground movement on behalf of its oppressed lower castes. Instead he finds himself in the company of dilettantes and psychopaths, relentlessly hunted by police and spurned by the people he means to liberate. But this is only one stop in a quest for authenticity that takes in all the fanaticism and folly…


Book cover of Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944

Jonathan Spyer Author Of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From my list on the human impact of war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and journalist. I grew up in London’s Jewish community, and lived in Israel and Jerusalem for most of my life. I'm fascinated by the Mid-East region, its history, religions, music, cultures, and colors, and by Jewish history. As a result of my experiences as a soldier in the Second Lebanon War of 2006, and the Second Intifada of 2000-4, my focus on conflict became central to my work. After the 2006 war, I became a conflict reporter, and I've covered war and insurgency in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Israel/West Bank/Gaza for a variety of publications. I also like to focus on the ways war and conflict impact human lives.   

Jonathan's book list on the human impact of war

Jonathan Spyer Why Jonathan loves this book

Max Hastings here describes the fight between the 10th SS Panzer Division and the French resistance forces, assisted by the British Special Operations Executive, in France in the period following D-Day, 1944. Hastings is in my view a peerless writer on conflict and military history, with a deep understanding of the costs of conflict on individuals, and considerable empathy for those caught up in it. I like that this empathy does not result in excessive romanticization of those engaged here in the irregular warfare against the Nazi German forces. Despite the unambiguous and obvious rights and wrongs of the conflict here described, the author never loses sight of the complexity of human motivations among the combatants, and indeed of the tactical errors and sometimes costly foolishness on the allied side as well as the German.  

By Max Hastings ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Das Reich as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Within days of the D-Day landings, the 'Das Reich' 2nd SS Panzer Division pushed north through France to reinforce Hitler's front-line defences in Europe. This is an account of these veterans who had participated in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Russian front, and how they were hounded on their march by the Resistance and the Allied Special


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Book cover of Retrieving the Future

Retrieving the Future by Randy C. Dockens,

Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.

Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…

Book cover of Killing Rage

Jonathan Spyer Author Of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From my list on the human impact of war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and journalist. I grew up in London’s Jewish community, and lived in Israel and Jerusalem for most of my life. I'm fascinated by the Mid-East region, its history, religions, music, cultures, and colors, and by Jewish history. As a result of my experiences as a soldier in the Second Lebanon War of 2006, and the Second Intifada of 2000-4, my focus on conflict became central to my work. After the 2006 war, I became a conflict reporter, and I've covered war and insurgency in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Israel/West Bank/Gaza for a variety of publications. I also like to focus on the ways war and conflict impact human lives.   

Jonathan's book list on the human impact of war

Jonathan Spyer Why Jonathan loves this book

The author of this fascinating book was an intelligence officer in a unit of the Provisional IRA, in the town of Newry in Northern Ireland, in the 1980s. Later, he broke under British interrogation and gave evidence against his former comrades. Though he later retracted the evidence, he was subsequently murdered, almost certainly by individuals linked to the republican movement. The book details the author’s reasons for joining the IRA, and his role in the movement’s armed campaign. Collins’s task was to seek out individuals linked in one way or another to British forces in the Newry area and then to facilitate their killing by the IRA. The book is written from a position of deep disillusionment with the campaign in which the author was engaged. It offers unique insight into some of the workings of this organization, and into the nature and motivations of the people involved.   

By Eamon Collins , Mick McGovern ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Killing Rage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is an account of how an angry young man can cross the line that divides theoretical support for violence from a state of 'killing rage', in which the murder of neighbour becomes thinkable. Over 3000 people have died in Northern Ireland since 1969, and most of them have died at the hands of their neighbours. The intimacy of the Ulster conflict, what it means to carry out a political murder when in all probability the victim is personally known, or lives in a nearby street, is described accurately by an honest participant. The book does not attempt to soften…


Book cover of Cry, Mother Spain

Johana Gustawsson Author Of Blood Song

From my list on resistance during The Spanish Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a French writer of Spanish origin. My two grandfathers shared history with Spain’s darkest hours. My maternal grandfather was born in Barcelona and he was a teenager at the time of the war; just like Salvayre’s parents, he had to flee Spain as the bombs were hitting his city. My paternal grandfather, who was in his twenties at the time of the civil war, decided to fight for the “International Brigades” to defend Spain’s freedom. It is to honour their memory and one of the millions of men and women who suffered from those almost four decades of dictatorship that I wrote Blood Song, a historical thriller, the third installment in the Roy and Castell series.

Johana's book list on resistance during The Spanish Civil War

Johana Gustawsson Why Johana loves this book

The former French psychiatrist Lydie Salvayre won the prestigious Goncourt Prize for that brilliant novel about the Spanish civil war. Salvayre’s parents, who were Republicans, had to flee Franco’s regime, and we feel that her writing is sewn with emotion and memories. The two voices we hear echo perfectly that troubling period of Spanish history: the one of Salvayre’s own mother recounting her experiencing the civil war and the one of the French writer Georges Bernanos. A novel not to be missed.

By Lydie Salvayre , Ben Faccini ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cry, Mother Spain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Aged fifteen, as Franco's forces begin their murderous purges and cities across Spain rise up against the old order, Montse has never heard the word fascista before. In any case, the villagers say facha (the ch is a real Spanish ch, by the way, with a real spit).

Montse lives in a small village, high in the hills, where few people can read or write and fewer still ever leave. If everything goes according to her mother's plan, Montse will never leave either. She will become a good, humble maid for the local landowners, muchisimas gracias, with every Sunday off…


Book cover of The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War

Martha A. Ackelsberg Author Of Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women

From my list on anarchism and revolution in the Spanish Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been studying and writing about, anarchism, gender, and the Spanish Civil War for almost 4 decades. I first explored what it would mean to organize a society without formal institutions of authority; and, as part of that research, I looked at how anarcho-syndicalist organizations related to governmental institutions and the struggle against fascism in Spain. I then engaged in a multi-year investigation of the social revolution that occurred in the midst of the ensuing Civil War and, in particular, the activities of the anarchist women’s organization, Mujeres Libres. Through the research for my book, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, I was captivated by the extraordinary strength and enthusiasm of those women, and committed myself to telling their stories in ways that would be relevant to contemporary readers.

Martha's book list on anarchism and revolution in the Spanish Civil War

Martha A. Ackelsberg Why Martha loves this book

This book was originally published almost immediately after the Civil War and provides an extraordinarily rich—and yet very readable---account of the many conflicting forces that led up to the war. It is an indispensable introduction to that history.

By Gerald Brenan ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spanish Labyrinth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Gerald Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth has become the classic account of the background to the Spanish Civil War. Written during and immediately after the Civil War, this book has all the vividness of the author's experience. It represents a struggle to see the issues in Spanish politics objectively, whilst bearing witness to the deep involvement which is the only possible source of much of this richly detailed account. As a literary figure on the fringe of the Bloomsbury group, Gerald Brenan lends to this narrative an engaging personal style that has become familiar to many thousands of readers over the…


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Book cover of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

What Walks This Way by Sharman Apt Russell,

Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…

Book cover of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

James McGrath Morris Author Of The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, DOS Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War

From my list on understanding the Spanish Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

James McGrath Morris is the author of The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War, which the Economist said was “as readable as a novel.” His previous work, Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, The First Lady of the Black Press was a New York Times bestseller. His next book is Tony Hillerman: A Life.

James' book list on understanding the Spanish Civil War

James McGrath Morris Why James loves this book

Both Hemingway and Orwell show up in this compelling, well-written, and sweeping account of the war. Hochschild is a brilliant writer who was aspired to take up this topic by Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Like he did in King Leopold’s Gold, Hochschild focuses his attention on a limited number of people making it easier to follow the story. The co-founder of Mother Jones, he brings to the book a lively magazine-style of narration. If Thomas’s work is too much, this is the one history worth reading. 

By Adam Hochschild ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spain in Our Hearts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Hemingway and George Orwell: A tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed.

For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini.

Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa’s photographs. But Adam Hochschild…


Book cover of Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past

Gijs van Hensbergen Author Of Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon

From my list on essential Spain.

Why am I passionate about this?

A lifetime of an obsession with Spain since a childhood spent on Miro’s farm in Montroig del Camp and just a short walk away from where Gaudi was born I have cooked, researched, battled, and fallen in love with this extraordinary country. Almost 40 years ago I bought a farmhouse in Arevalillo de Cega in the central mountains in Spain from where I have crisscrossed the country in the footsteps of Goya, the culinary genius Ferran Adria and in search of information for my biography on Gaudi – the God of Catalan architecture. Spain is an open book with a million pages, endlessly fascinating, contrary, unique, and 100% absorbing. I fell in deep.

Gijs' book list on essential Spain

Gijs van Hensbergen Why Gijs loves this book

As the Guardian correspondent in Madrid, Giles Tremlett’s book is a no-holds-barred deep investigation into the Spanish psyche and recent history and its uncomfortable relationship to the trauma of the Spanish Civil War. It is brave, provocative, deeply-researched but above all immensely readable.

By Giles Tremlett ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ghosts of Spain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Spaniards are reputed to be amongst Europe's most forthright people. So why have they kept silent about the terrors of their Civil War and the rule of General Franco? This apparent 'pact of forgetting' inspired writer Giles Tremlett to embark on a journey around Spain and its history. He found the ghosts of Spain everywhere, almost always arguing. Who caused the Civil War? Why do Basque terrorists kill? Why do Catalans hate Madrid? Did the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people in 2004 dream of a return to Spain's Moorish past? Tremlett's curiosity led him down some strange and colourful…


Book cover of The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge

John Ludlam Author Of We Are Made

From my list on get under the skin of 1930s Britain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by the 1930s. In Britain, the decade was haunted by troubling memories of the Great War and growing fears of a more terrible conflict to come. In other words, it was a decade dominated by geopolitics. After more than 30 years as a journalist for the Reuters news agency, I’ve learned that geopolitics will never leave us alone. My novel is the first in a series of stories examining what geopolitics does to ordinary people caught in its grip. This selection of fiction and nonfiction titles is a fascinating introduction to what the poet WH Auden called ‘a low dishonest decade’.

John's book list on get under the skin of 1930s Britain

John Ludlam Why John loves this book

If the First World War was the brooding background to 1930s Britain, the Spanish Civil War was the tragic conflict at its centre. Thousands of British volunteers went to Spain to fight, overwhelmingly on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the British government’s dogged adherence to a non-intervention agreement was slowly starving the Republicans of military aid.

I rate Preston’s account of the war because he shows how the brutal civil conflict became a proxy battleground for international forces of right and left while Britain clung to non-intervention. London was in a genuine bind over Spain but ended up adopting a position that paved the way for the appeasement of Hitler, a policy many Britons saw as profoundly dishonest.

By Paul Preston ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spanish Civil War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it.

The attempted social revolution in Spain awakened progressive hopes during the Depression, but the conflict quickly escalated into a new and horrific form of warfare. As Preston shows, the unprecedented levels of brutality were burned into the American…


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Book cover of The Bridge: Connecting The Powers of Linear and Circular Thinking

The Bridge by Kim Hudson,

The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…

Book cover of The Time of the Doves

Jenny Jaeckel Author Of Boy, Falling

From my list on historical fiction by diverse women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an award-winning author and illustrator who works in a variety of genres, including Historical Fiction. When historical fiction is well done it conveys times and events as they were lived and breathed by real people. Historical fiction by diverse women tells the stories of those consistently left out of the “historical record.” Human life is rich and diverse, and the stories belong to all of us, not just those who have historically had the power to control the cultural narratives. As a writer and student of history, it has been my pleasure to explore characters that are not often represented, characters that are ordinary for their times, and extraordinary as well. 

Jenny's book list on historical fiction by diverse women

Jenny Jaeckel Why Jenny loves this book

The Time of the Doves is one of my favorite books of all time for its intimacy, immediacy, and unusual descriptive power. Natalia, a young woman living in Barcelona around the time of the Spanish Civil war, paints for the reader a vivid and seamless picture of her life from the inside out—her loves and losses, survival, the confusion of a world broken by chaos and violence and put back together again by perseverance and tenderness. A short but unforgettable read that I return to again and again.

By Mercè Rodoreda , David H. Rosenthal (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Time of the Doves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Time of the Doves - by Mercè Rodoreda - is the powerfully written story of a naïve shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.


Book cover of Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria
Book cover of Magic Seeds
Book cover of Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944

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Interested in the Spanish Civil War, Spain, and family?

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