100 Books Like Samurai!

This one tells the true tale of the last Chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker. His mother was a white woman who had been captured as a teenager by the Comanche in a raid and raised from then on in the tribe. Parker develops into a powerful warrior and a great leader at a time when the white man was making life almost impossible for the Comanche.

The second part of his life is quite different from the first part, and both are equally fascinating. It's another one that I am always sad to finish, but I have listened to it at least five times so far. It never gets old and is an amazing listen. 

Much like the biography of Quanah Parker, this book tells the story of Red Cloud, the last great Chief of the Sioux Indians and the only one to defeat the Americans in war. He's an amazing historical figure and not one that I had learned anything about in school.

I'm fascinated by this period of American history and the complex relations between the Native American tribes and the white settlers. Red Cloud was not only a great warrior and leader of men but also insightful and pragmatic. I found him quite heroic and more interesting than Sitting Bull, who seems more well-known. It's a great book, another one for me that is a joy to revisit regularly. 

We are probably familiar with the hit musical Hamilton, but the historical biography on which it was based is equally compelling. Chernow really makes Alexander Hamilton come to life as a fully rounded, complex person, not just a cardboard cutout of a founding father.

His myriad clashes with Thomas Jefferson, his service under General Washington in the Revolutionary War, and his involvement in one of the first public sex scandals are all fascinating parts of this amazing tome. I've re-read it a number of times, I find it so gripping and tragic. 

This short book is apparently a classic of Japanese modern literature, but I was not aware of it until recently. It was written by a former Japanese soldier about his experience in Burma at the end of World War II. It's nonfiction and is a memoir. But it captures something culturally universal about the human condition and is heartwarming.

It also mostly takes place after the end of hostilities, in case you are not good with violent imagery, as there is almost none of that. I could not put it down and was sad to finish it. 

Churchill famously said that history would judge that he was right, and he would write the history. I admire David’s forensic approach to Churchill’s use of omissions and careful phrasing in this book to lend plausibility to counterfactuals regarding how Hitler could have been stopped. A masterpiece of historiography that enabled me to read Churchill’s work with new eyes.

Hashimoto was the Japanese sub captain of the I-58, who sank the USS Indianapolis shortly after it delivered the atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II. The story of the Indianapolis has been told in several excellent books including, “In Harms Way” and “Fatal Voyage” as well as the movie, “Jaws,” but never from the Japanese point of view. How Hashimoto and his crew survived the war is integral to this story which makes The Hunt for Red October seem like child’s play. And it’s all true!

I thought I knew a thing or two about the history of World War II. Somehow, the battle for New Guinea escaped me, despite the role played by the American General, Douglas MacArthur. Significant as a turning point in the war and enabling MacArthur's return to the Philippines, the fight in New Guinea deserves mention in the same breath as the stepping-stone battles of the Pacific islands. The fighting was brutal and the conditions for both Japanese and Allied troops were horrid—trails ascending rugged mountains, supply-chain difficulties, diseases that diminished the abilities of troops to fight. I have been to New Guinea twice. Duffy captured the ruggedness of the land and his telling of the stories made me feel the place, the people, and their challenges.

James Jones's brilliant debut novel must have had a great effect on me because I admit, in many ways, my book covers the same ground – how does a man maintain honor and dignity when constrained to live his life by the choices of other, and much more powerful men? I suppose the difference between our two themes is that the question in my book is about those same choices but wrapped in the question of race. Jones’s characters, while in the military, were dealing with personal issues. My Corporal Buck is dealing with an issue about which all of America is on fire.

From Here to Eternity is 70 years old. I read it in 1969, an eternity ago and it has lasted with me from there to here.  When I was in the Marine Corps I knew everything that was happening to me. But I didn’t know what… show more.

J.B. Priestley produced this engrossing spy chiller written and set in the desperate days of 1942 when the future looked grimmer by the hour. A grieving middle-aged engineer goes undercover in a grimy Midland town where vital aircraft are being built. British Intelligence suspects lurking Nazi agents and saboteurs, while it is up to our man to track them down. As he investigates, it seems that everyone is hiding secrets and soon he is embroiled in a tangle of deceit and murder. The book was ahead of its time. The protagonist is quite the modern anti-hero, struggling with inner demons, echoed by the endless grind of the blackouts, and I was gripped by the way he ultimately finds something worth fighting for. The story is dazzlingly put together, filled with contemporary details and deep menace that result in a classic page-turner, ideal for a binge read on a dark afternoon.… show more.

This is the first book I’ve ever read written by a Japanese sub commander that describes submarine warfare from the Japanese point of view. Few Japanese sub commanders survived the war, so how Orita lived to tell the tale is just one of the many remarkable stories he recounts in his book. Not only does it read like a suspense thriller, you’ll have newfound respect for the suffering he and his crews went through. Bottom line: The Japanese version of Das Boot!