WW2 further reading
Books to take you further into each episode of Revisiting The Second World War, chosen by Michael Baker. Links lead to the historian interviewed in that episode.
Books are not listed in order of importance. The year usually denotes the edition rather than first publication.
- David Edgerton, Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War (Penguin, 2012)
- David Edgerton, England and The Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (Penguin, 2013)
- David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History (Penguin, 2019)
- Daniel Todman, Britain's War: Into Battle 1937-41 (Penguin, 2017)
- Daniel Todman, Britain's War: A New World 1942-47 (Allen Lane, 2020)
- Alan Allport, Britain At Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War 1938-1941 (Profile, 2020)
- Graham T. Clews, Churchill's Phoney War: A Study in Folly and Frustration (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press, 2019)
- Jonathan Fennell, Fighting The People's War (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
- Tim Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Vintage, 2020)
- Mark Connelly, We Can Take It: Britain and the Memory of the Second World War (Pearson Education, 2004)
- A. Wilson, R. Hammond, J. Fennell (eds), The People's War? (McGill-Queens University Press, 2022)
- Angus Calder, The People's War: Britain 1939-45 (London, 1969)
- Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London, 1991)
- Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London, 2000)
- Richard Overy, The Battle of Britain: Myth and Reality (Penguin, 2010)
- Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (New York, 2006)
- Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War 1931-1945 (Allen Lane, 2021)
- Richard Overy, Why The Allies Won (Pimlico, 2006)
- Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 (Penguin, 2014)
- Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet War Effort 1941-1945 (Penguin, 1998)
- Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (New York, 2006)
- Jeremy Black, Rethinking World War Two: The Conflict and its Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2015)
- Robert Lyman, A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma and Britain 1941-45 (Osprey, 2021)
- Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China's World War Two 1937-1945 (First Mariner, 2014)
- Evan Mawdsley, The War for the Seas: A Maritime History of World War Two (Yale University Press, 2020)
- Simon Ball, The Bitter Sea: The Brutal World War II Fight for the Mediterranean (Harper, 2010)
- Rick Atkinson, 'The Liberation Trilogy': An Army At Dawn, (Vol 1, Abacus, 2002) The Day of Battle (Vol 2, 2007), The Guns at Last Light (Vol 3, 2013)
- James Holland, The War in the West - A New History 1939-1945: Germany Ascendant 1939-41 (Vol 1, Corgi 2016), The Allies Fight Back 1941-1943 (Vol 2, 2017)
- John Buckley, Monty's Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe (Yale University Press, 2014)
- Peter Caddick-Adams, 1945: Victory in the West (Penguin, 2023)
- Ian W. Toll, 'The Pacific War Trilogy': Pacific Crucible (Vol 1, Norton, 2012); The Conquering Tide (Vol 2, 2015); Twilight of the Gods (Vol 3, 2020)
- Richard B. Frank, Tower of Skulls; A History of the Asia-Pacific War, July 1937-May 1942 (Norton, 2020)
- Robert Lyman, A War of Empires (Osprey, 2021)
- Evan Mawdsley, The War for the Seas (YUP, 2020)
- Richard Hough, The Longest Battle: The War At Sea 1939-1945 (Canelo, 2021)
- Paul Kennedy, Victory At Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War Two (Yale University Press, 2022)
- Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing The Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan (Harvard University Press, 2005)
- Brian P. Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942 (Tempus, 2005)
- James M. Scott, Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, The Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (Norton, 2022)
- Saul David, Crucible of Hell: Okinawa, the Last Great Battle of the Second World War (Collins, 2021)
- Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (Penguin, 2012)
- Evan Mawdsley, The War for the Seas (YUP, 2020)
- Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Penguin, 2007)
- Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic (The History Press, 2011)
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (Penguin, 1998)
- Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally (First Mariner, 2014)
- Christian Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
- David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-49 (Pan, 2017)
- Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Vintage, 2015)
- Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Vintage, 2016)
- Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Yale University Press, 2003; first pub'd 1961)
- Peter Longerich, Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution (Oxford University Press, 2021)
- Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
- Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction (Penguin, 2007)
- Jan T. Gross, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, 1941 (Arrow, 2003)
- Hans van de Ven, China At War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China 1937-1952 (Profile, 2017)
- Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, Hans van de Ven (eds), The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2011)
- Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally (First Mariner, 2014)
- Richard B. Frank, Tower of Skulls (Norton, 2020)
- Robert Lyman, A War of Empires (Osprey, 2021)
- James Holland, Burma '44: The Battle that Turned Britain's War in the East (Corgi, 2016)
- Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing The Enemy (Harvard, 2005)
- Halik Kochanski, Resistance: The Underground War in Europe 1939-1945 (Allen Lane, 2022)
- Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2012)
- Alexandra Richie, Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Warsaw Uprising (New York, 2013)
- Matthew Cobb, The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis (Simon & Schuster, 2010)
- Caroline Morehead, A House in the Mountains: The Women who Liberated Italy from Fascism (Vintage, 2020)
- Marcia Kurapovna, Shadows on the Mountain: The Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries that Doomed WW2 Yugoslavia (Trade Paper Press, 2009)
- Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-53 (Yale University Press, 2008)
- Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (Icon, 2013)
- Martin Folly, Geoffrey Roberts, Oleg Rzheshevsky (eds), Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms during the Second World War (Pen and Sword, 2019)
- Alfred J. Rieber, Stalin As Warlord (Yale University Press, 2022)
- Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945 (Bloomsbury, 2016)
- David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed: How The Red Army Stopped Hitler (University Press of Kansas, 2015)
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (Penguin, 2010)
- Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: The Red Army 1939-45 (Faber and Faber, 2006)
- Nicholas Stargadt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms 1939-45 (Vintage, 2016)
- Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1992)
- Prit Buttar, Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War Two (Osprey, 2015)
- John Bodnar, The 'Good War' in American Memory (John Hopkins University Press, 2010)
- Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II (John Hopkins University Press, 2015)
- Elizabeth D. Samet, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)
- Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 1989)
- Studs Terkel, 'The Good War': An Oral History of World War Two (The New Press, 1997)
- Charles Glass, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II (Collins, 2014)
- Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (University of Chicago Press)
- Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (Random House, 1998)
- Stephen Ambrose, D-Day - 6 June, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches (Simon & Schuster UK, 2016)
- Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers (Simon & Schuster UK, 2017)
- Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War Two (Penguin, 2013)
- Keith Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking 2017)
- Keith Lowe, Prisoners of History: What Monuments to World War Two Tell Us about our History and Ourselves (Collins, 2021)
- Harald Jahner, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich 1945-55 (W.H. Allen, 2021)
- Nicholas Stargadt, The German War (Vintage, 2016)
- Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel, A Village in the Third Reich (Elliott & Thompson, 2022)
- Walter Kempowski, Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary from Hitler's Last Birthday to VE Day (Granta, 2015)
- Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Profile, 2021)