Books like The Guns at Last Light — picked by fans

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.  

Full disclosure: James Madison, professor emeritus of history at Indiana University, is someone I not only know but have long admired for his many books on Hoosier history.

In this book, he focuses on Elizabeth Richardson, a Red Cross Clubmobile hostess from Mishawaka, Indiana, who shared coffee, doughnuts, and small talk with soldiers in England and France beginning in 1944. In July 1945, she died overseas in a plane crash, and her remains rest today in the American Cemetery in Normandy, one of only four women buried there among the nearly 9,400 men.

Madison supplies vital background information about Richardson but also allows her to speak directly to readers through her many war-era letters and diary entries. We come to care deeply about this intelligent, curious, and determined Red Cross worker who – as Madison put it – “without firing a weapon ... came to know war.”

Red Cross trainees were among the thousands of people who poured into Washington, D.C., during World War II, with Mary Brandon–in our book–arriving there for instruction in 1943. What was the city like?

Esteemed journalist David Brinkley shared his personal reminiscences of a 1940s-era Washington in this lively account, showing how the city morphed rapidly from a slow-moving Southern town into an initially ill-prepared wartime capital. Brinkley’s many anecdotes are amusing, astonishing, and always instructive, as when he noted that even though the army placed antiaircraft guns on roofs of government buildings, so few guns were available that some–it was later learned–were merely wood replicas.

Through Mary Brandon’s letters, I glimpsed wartime Washington. Brinkley’s book treated me to a full portrait.

It’s no secret that uniformed men and women welcome canine friends in wartime. In our book, Bill Husselman and Mary Brandon wrote home regularly about dogs they or their mates adopted in France, Italy, and elsewhere.

That said, Robert Weintraub’s book is no ordinary tale about bonding between humans and animals. Weintraub painstakingly recounts how an RAF radar technician named Frank and a purebred English pointer named Judy survived separate hells at the start of World War II, only to be imprisoned in an internment camp in the Pacific. There, despite being close to starvation, they used their wits to keep each other alive, even as they were subjected to ever-worsening cruelty and malnutrition.

Weintraub’s story is spellbinding and inspiring–and no less a love story of loyalty between man and dog.

This large (718 pages) book covers the entire history of U.S. military parachute and glider operations—from the early evolution of the concept through landings in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, Southern France, Holland, Battle of the Bulge, Leyte, Manila, and Corregidor. Anyone wanting to appreciate the myriad American parachute and glider operations will find a wealth of information in Devlin’s book.

The maps in this volume are so instructive, and it offers comprehensive information on all fronts of the war. For one lacking in geographical and military strategy knowledge, I count this book as invaluable to my research.

What happens when an author with a remarkable knack for insightful research and a gift for brilliant narrative prose takes on the task of telling a story of such epochal importance? A wonderful book that conveys the desperation of the moment and weaves this together with latter-year perspective. Among Beevor’s many insights, my favorite is his assertion that “the German leadership’s greatest mistake in the Ardennes offensive was to have misjudged the soldiers of an army they had affected to despise.” So very true! The Germans badly underestimated the U.S. Army and they paid the price for their dismissive chauvinism.

Andie Newton writes historical fiction with strong female leads, set during World War II. In The Girls from the Beach, Kit, an American nurse, is sent behind enemy lines to infiltrate the Reich and steal something critical to the outcome of the war. It’s a gripping, edge-of-your-seat story that’s guaranteed to have you bawling by the end.  

Obviously, I’d need a time machine to have dinner with Kit as a young woman, but she could still be around today, recounting heroic tales from that awful time. Kit is super brave and she’s persevered through unimaginable circumstances. Even if she didn’t want to share her stories, I’d invite her as a thank you for the sacrifices she and all service people made so we have the freedom we have today. 

When Ceelie, reeling from everything cancer has stolen from her, sets out to track down her ailing friend’s father, who disappeared decades ago, she uncovers a story of faith, heroism, and heartbreak dating back to the Normandy beaches in World War II—and finds her own life transformed.

Michele Phoenix does it again in Fragments of Light. With prose that takes your breath away, she expertly navigates two time periods while exploring themes of loss, love, forgiveness, regret, and redemption. And France! What could be better! These themes often populate my novels and Michele’s novel was an inspiration for me.

Although it has no illustrations (and seeing the face of the soldier writing the letters is very important to feel connected), reading these archives from the Imperial War Museum, focusing on British Forces’ Personal Letters and Diaries during the Second World War, was a fantastic read. The soldiers’ names and personal stories are disclosed and there’s a historical context for the neophytes. It also deals with battles that we seldom hear about (looking at you, books about D-Day on Omaha Beach!!).