Here are 100 books that Racial Hygiene fans have personally recommended if you like
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It’s quite simple, I just love history. I particularly like the dual timeline format because it’s a reminder that what has happened in the past remains relevant to the present. The narratives might be set hundreds of years apart, but there are common themes that continue to shape our lives and define us as human beings–some of them good and others that are potentially more destructive. I now write this sort of fiction, and I continue to devour it as a reader. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
At the time of writing, this is the last book I read, in the couple of weeks before the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Powerful is the only way to describe it.
I think it’s the ordinariness of the characters, particularly the main protagonists, that makes it so powerful. None of them had any training or expertise that would have helped them to ‘fight’ back, to resist; they are just ordinary people doing extraordinary things, which is what happened during the Second World War, particularly in occupied France.
It’s a reminder that we should never forget our history—even when it isn’t very palatable—and hope that one day we might start to learn from it.
Soon to be a major motion picture, The Nightingale is a multi-million copy bestseller across the world. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the endurance of women.
This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II when women's stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . . Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I once had a history advisor in school whom I informed that I was studying history so I could write fiction better. I saw him cringe a bit at that. Even so, I think that history and fiction–and the mystery–go together well. I am always drawn by mystery dramas–and by the drama of real lives facing and unraveling their way through real events. Of course, that led to graduate studies in cultural and intellectual history, to many years of teaching literature, and to passionate reading of mystery novels. Sparkling fiction and strong narrative history, for me, continue to stimulate a sense of wonder at human experience and this incredible universe we live in.
A secret intelligence program with Nazi scientists is described in such colorful detail that this nonfiction book riveted my attention.
What was most compelling for me was the story of how these scientists and technological experts were utilized by American ingenuity. A fascinating and well-researched history book always holds my interest.
In the chaos following WWII, many of Germany's remaining resources were divvied up among allied forces. Some of the greatest spoils were the Third Reich's scientific minds--the minds that made their programs in aerospace and rocketry the best in the world. The United States secretly decided that the value of these former Nazis' forbidden knowledge outweighed their crimes, and the government formed a covert organization called Operation Paperclip to allow them to work without the knowledge of the American public.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, with access to German archival documents (including, notably, papers available…
I once had a history advisor in school whom I informed that I was studying history so I could write fiction better. I saw him cringe a bit at that. Even so, I think that history and fiction–and the mystery–go together well. I am always drawn by mystery dramas–and by the drama of real lives facing and unraveling their way through real events. Of course, that led to graduate studies in cultural and intellectual history, to many years of teaching literature, and to passionate reading of mystery novels. Sparkling fiction and strong narrative history, for me, continue to stimulate a sense of wonder at human experience and this incredible universe we live in.
I loved the intrigue and the sleight-of-hand narrative quality of this character-driven mystery.
The magic interests of the main character drew me into a suspenseful reading experience. Kardos creates a kind of magic with twists and turns in plot and style. This character is a magician who needs all the savvy and brilliance of a wizard to untangle this puzzle.
A fast-paced, page-turning thriller for fans of Michael Connelly and Linwood Barclay.
With nothing left to lose you might as well risk it all.
Natalie Webb has taken the gamble of her life. To survive the night, she will have to use every trick she can - each stack of the deck could be her last.
Lured by a $1.5 million payoff, former card-trick prodigy Natalie has accepted a dangerous proposal from a beguiling card shark: to cheat the table at a high rollers' private poker game.
But blindsided by her own dazzling sleight of hand, Natalie hasn't realised the…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I once had a history advisor in school whom I informed that I was studying history so I could write fiction better. I saw him cringe a bit at that. Even so, I think that history and fiction–and the mystery–go together well. I am always drawn by mystery dramas–and by the drama of real lives facing and unraveling their way through real events. Of course, that led to graduate studies in cultural and intellectual history, to many years of teaching literature, and to passionate reading of mystery novels. Sparkling fiction and strong narrative history, for me, continue to stimulate a sense of wonder at human experience and this incredible universe we live in.
History comes alive in this mysterious story of a prohibition finagler and his underground operation.
I enjoyed how Bob Batchelor gives us the dirt on this smuggler of the prohibition years: his business, his secrets, his cronies, and his enemies. This is a stunningly sharp narrative that reads like a novel.
The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes noted that botanists should write history because so much history involves plants. Coincidentally, I am a botanist with a deep interest in history. I began as a child botanizing abandoned farmers’ fields, and now I am always on the lookout for topics at the intersection of plants and human affairs. The books on my list are among many I read while researching for my book. In exploring the role of plants in warfare, I have synthesized vast information about human and military needs, from rationed foods to camouflage and battlefront medicine. Germany provided many unexpected findings.
I was amazed to learn of the Nazi obsession with nature, from sustainable forestry to air quality and native plants. During the 1930s, German environmentalists set forth the Third Reich agenda to preserve the natural world.
Embedded in German nationalism was a deep feeling for the land and landscapes of the Nazi native land; even the Autobahn was designed to allow easy access to natural sites and hiking trails!
However, the Nazi military agenda to dominate Europe and beyond ultimately derailed their green agenda. This eye-opening book unpacks the connection between German Volk and environmentalism despite the pseudo-scientific premises of Third Reich doctrine.
The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich is the first book to examine the Third Reich's environmental policies and to offer an in-depth exploration of the intersections between brown ideologies and green practices.
Environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazi regime with open arms and hoped that it would bring about legal and institutional changes. However, environmentalists soon realized that the rhetorical attention they…
The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes noted that botanists should write history because so much history involves plants. Coincidentally, I am a botanist with a deep interest in history. I began as a child botanizing abandoned farmers’ fields, and now I am always on the lookout for topics at the intersection of plants and human affairs. The books on my list are among many I read while researching for my book. In exploring the role of plants in warfare, I have synthesized vast information about human and military needs, from rationed foods to camouflage and battlefront medicine. Germany provided many unexpected findings.
I always wanted to learn more about the forgotten aspects of the history of the biological sciences, and Biologists Under Hitler did not disappoint in this regard.
Biologists in Nazi Germany were faced with some hard choices—did they adopt the pseudoscientific Nazi party line about racial disparities, or did they abandon their scientific posts? By the end of the war, the German natural sciences dwindled, and biology was particularly hard hit; could biologists who survived the Third Reich be trusted by their global colleagues?
In particular, I was interested in learning about scientific research conducted by the SS, which seems like an oxymoron but did indeed occur in a disordered way, guided by Heinrich Himmler's botanical and medical interests.
On the subject of science in Nazi Germany, we are apt to hear about the collaboration of some scientists, the forced emigration of talented Jewish scientists, the general science phobia of leaders of the Third Reich - but little detail about what actually transpired. "Biologists Under Hitler" examines the impact of Nazism on the lives and research of a generation of German biologists. Drawing on previously unutilized archival material, Ute Deichmann, herself a biologist, explores not only what happened to the biologists forced to emigrate but also the careers, science and crimes of those who stayed in Germany. "Biologists Under…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes noted that botanists should write history because so much history involves plants. Coincidentally, I am a botanist with a deep interest in history. I began as a child botanizing abandoned farmers’ fields, and now I am always on the lookout for topics at the intersection of plants and human affairs. The books on my list are among many I read while researching for my book. In exploring the role of plants in warfare, I have synthesized vast information about human and military needs, from rationed foods to camouflage and battlefront medicine. Germany provided many unexpected findings.
I have been intrigued by the coexistence of crackpot notions and prescient science in the Third Reich, and the medical science of oncology provides some remarkable examples of the latter. German doctors realized that the high incidence of stomach cancers correlated with diet, leading to suspicion of smoked meats, aflatoxins, coal tar dyes, and various adulterants as possible causes of various cancers.
As cheap alternatives to modern medicine and processed flour, herbal teas and whole grain foods became part of the Third Reich social doctrine for reasons of both health and economy. Meat was eyed with suspicion (and growing crops as fodder wasted energy), and so vegetable cookery was encouraged.
Beyond cancer concerns, I found awareness of fetal alcohol syndrome to be quite surprising; Third Reich doctors admired the U.S. temperance policy and encouraged expectant mothers to drink unfermented cider to avoid alcohol effects on fetal development.
Collaboration in the Holocaust. Murderous and torturous medical experiments. The "euthanasia" of hundreds of thousands of people with mental or physical disabilities. Widespread sterilization of "the unfit." Nazi doctors committed these and countless other atrocities as part of Hitler's warped quest to create a German master race. Robert Proctor recently made the explosive discovery, however, that Nazi Germany was also decades ahead of other countries in promoting health reforms that we today regard as progressive and socially responsible. Most startling, Nazi scientists were the first to definitively link lung cancer and cigarette smoking. Proctor explores the controversial and troubling questions…
The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes noted that botanists should write history because so much history involves plants. Coincidentally, I am a botanist with a deep interest in history. I began as a child botanizing abandoned farmers’ fields, and now I am always on the lookout for topics at the intersection of plants and human affairs. The books on my list are among many I read while researching for my book. In exploring the role of plants in warfare, I have synthesized vast information about human and military needs, from rationed foods to camouflage and battlefront medicine. Germany provided many unexpected findings.
Conservation was an offshoot of the Blut und Boden (blood and soil) ideology of the Third Reich, in which Aryan families were linked to the land through a hereditary right and the promotion of rural values.
Native plants and countryside habitats were considered superior and worthy of preservation, and conservation evolved from its 19th-century origins to nationalist thinking in the 1930s. I was particularly intrigued by the Dauerwald (continuous forest), a set of forestry practices in which clear-cutting was replaced by selective cutting, keeping habitats and plant populations intact.
The growing demand for wood in the wartime economy required conservation, which was viewed with suspicion after the war because of its connections to Third Reich doctrine.
This study provides the first comprehensive discussion of conservation in Nazi Germany. Looking at Germany in an international context, it analyses the roots of conservation in the late nineteenth century, the gradual adaptation of racist and nationalist thinking among conservationists in the 1920s and their indifference to the Weimar Republic. It describes how the German conservation movement came to cooperate with the Nazi regime and discusses the ideological and institutional lines between the conservation movement and the Nazis. Uekoetter further examines how the conservation movement struggled to do away with a troublesome past after World War II, making the environmentalists…
Why did I end up spending almost a third of my life researching Nazi boarding schools, and childhood under the Third Reich more generally? I sometimes wonder if it was because I myself was sent to boarding school at the age of nine – somehow, I can sympathise with what these children had to endure, as well as knowing full well from a historian’s perspective which hardships were truly unique to a National Socialist elite education, and which were simply the kind of heart-ache that’s common to any institution which takes children away from their parents at a young age…
Written during the Third Reich itself, this is the hard-hitting book that told the world just how heinous Nazi education policy was – although it was only heeded by a prescient few at the time. Anyone who is worried about how easily schooling can become subject to ideology should definitely read this book!
Published in 1938, when Nazi power was approaching its zenith, this well-documented indictment reveals the systematic brainwashing of Germany's youth. The Nazi program prepared for its future with a fanatical focus on national preeminence and warlike readiness that dominated every department and phase of education. Methods included alienating children from their parents, promoting notions of racial superiority instead of science, and developing a cult of personality centered on Hitler. Erika Mann, a member of the World War II generation of German youth, observed firsthand the Third Reich's perversion of a once-proud school system and the systematic poisoning of family life.…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Unlike most children of immigrants who were told nothing about the past, I grew up surrounded by family history—my grandfather’s village in Russia, my father’s memories of 1930s Europe, and my mother’s childhood on a migrant worker farm during the Great Depression. I realized that history isn’t just names and dates but a unique opportunity to study human behavior. I wrote Hammer of the Gods about the Thule Society because Thule was often mentioned in passing by historians of Nazi Germany, as if they were uncomfortable delving into an occult group recognized as influential on the Nazis. I decided I wanted to learn who they were and what they wanted.
I found this book by the German scholar Joachim Fest many years ago at a flea market. Fest’s portrait of Hitler and a dozen high-ranking officials of the Third Reich became models for my own writing. Fest maps out the range of personalities—their cruelty, greed, and misplaced ideals—and the way in which Hitler encouraged rivalry among them to preserve absolute power for himself.
