Caroline Moorehead’s clear, compelling prose and sure-handed grasp of historical events combine to make Mussolini’s Daughter read like a page-turning thriller.
Simon Parkin brings the shameful history of British internment camps during World War II to life in The Island of Extraordinary Captives.
Jonathan Freedland tells the story of Rudolf Vrba, the first Jewish person to escape from Auschwitz, with a novelist’s verve.
Murders, kidnappings, perilous escapes, suicide missions, poisoned knives, marriage plots, witchcraft allegations: The Dark Queens has them all.
Medieval historian Cait Stevenson straddles the worlds of scholarly and popular history, and her fervor is contagious in How to Slay a Dragon.
It’s difficult to imagine a salon in Auschwitz, but there was in fact a fashion studio mere yards away from the interrogation block used to torture prisoners.
Arthur Herman attributes Scandinavians’ many historical contributions to the “Viking heart,” an unquenchable thirst for improvement and community-building.
In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, Charlie English tells the tale of two art critics: Hans Prinzhorn and Adolf Hitler.
After Julie Metz discovered “a vault of secrets” in her mother’s lingerie drawer, she went searching for information about her family’s prewar life in Austria.
The Light of Days, a scrupulously researched narrative history about young Jewish women who resisted the Nazis in Europe, is a huge achievement.
Alexander Larman details one of the royal family’s biggest scandals: When King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry his lover, Wallis Simpson.
The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive asks a thorny question: Is a son’s love sufficient to redeem a monstrous father?
Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin never met, but between 1939 and 1945 they had a strong relationship, and Laurence Rees brings this six-year period vividly alive.
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