Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned With the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler by Bruce Henderson

Non-Fiction

At the start of WWII, Jewish families were doing anything and everything they could to get their children away from the Nazis. Families got split up as parents could tried to emigrate their children out of Germany and to safety. There were many boys that ended up in America, though mostly only one per family as there were rules about sponsoring immigrants. By this time, some of the boys had experienced a concentration camp, but all of them had experienced discrimination and possibly even violence as things got worse and worse in Germany.

Most of the boys had no idea what had happened to the rest of their family and by the time the US entered the war, all they could think about was getting back to Germany and helping fight against the Nazis. However, being citizens of a country the US was at war with, they weren't all warmly accepted in to service. Most of the boys ended up becoming American citizens, and they ended up at Camp Ritchie. The men from this book were brought to that training facility because they knew German and were taught interrogation techniques. The Ritchie Boys ended up being responsible for many important intelligence finds during the war that likely saved many lives.

This book takes a look a few individual men that were part of the Ritchie Boys. It explains what happened to their families to cause them to seek emigration to the USA, many of the times a heartbreaking story about how life changed under Nazi rule and then how they had to leave their family behind not knowing what would happen for safety. The short time they spend in the USA is described to show how well they integrated, and then the start of the war. Some struggled being German in the USA but they all eventually found their purpose in the Ritchie Boys. Much training was needed, and eventually they all ended up in Europe, at war.

The story of the Ritchie Boys is expertly told in a very compassionate way. You can tell this is a work of passion. It's obvious a lot of research went in to this, as well as trying to figure out how to tell the story of multiple boys in a coherent way without seeming disjointed. This book will appeal to those who are history buffs and those who just want to read a good story. It's very accessible from that way.

I really enjoyed this novel, both the subject and the writing. I'll be looking up other books by this author.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this tour. Interested in purchasing this book? You can do so here.

First Line: "Loud banging at the front door jolted Martin Selling out of a sound sleep."

Rating:
(4.5/5)

About the Author Bruce Henderson is the author or coauthor of more than twenty nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller And the Sea Will Tell. He lives in Menlo Park, California. Find out more at his website, and connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture by Joshua Levine

History

Dunkirk was a massively successful failure in WWII. I had never learned about this story in history class so knew absolutely nothing coming in, other than this took place in the early parts of WWII. The British and French troops kept getting pushed back and back by the Germans until they wound up on the beaches of Dunkirk, France having to be evacuated across the channel. Ships came from everywhere, both civilian and navy, to evacuate these troops. Many died, but many many more were rescued. This book tells the story of what lead up to Dunkirk and how this rescue took place.

This book is also about the new movie Christopher Nolan is making on the events at Dunkirk. There's both an interview with Nolan at the start and a chapter at the end of the book about the making of the movie. Having no knowledge about Dunkirk, I found the Nolan interview at the start of the book oddly placed. I was worried it was going to spoil something further in the book and couldn't appreciate their interest in the story because I knew nothing about it yet. However, the notes at the end of the book on the film making were quite interesting. The fact that they filmed on the Dunkirk beach should make this even more authentic.

In the telling of what happened at Dunkirk, there were many eye witness accounts stitching together Levine's story. These likely come from his other book Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk (I can't help but wonder if the book is exactly the same, but with chapters added on the movie). These accounts were very interesting, but overall they were all quite short, which lead to some major pacing issues in this book. The history of Dunkirk isn't started until about page 60. Then the book is on a roller coaster from engaging and interesting to boring. At times I wondered if I should give up, but I stuck through to the end. It does get better once the troops are on the beach and the rescue attempt is underway.

I'm not a huge history buff (but do enjoy well tell stories of historical events) and feel that most parts of this book are geared towards someone of a more historical buff nature. If you can get past the first 100 pages or so, you'll learn a lot about this event and the movie that will represent it.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this tour. Interested in trying this book for yourself? You can find where to buy it here.

Rating:
(3/5)

About the Author Joshua Levine has written six bestselling histories including titles in the hugely popular ‘Forgotten Voices’ series. ‘Beauty and Atrocity’, his account of the Irish Troubles, was nominated for the Writers’ Guild Book of the Year award. ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’, his history of the pilots of the First World War, has been turned into a major British television documentary. He has written and presented a number of programmes for BBC Radio 4. In a previous life, he was a criminal barrister. He lives in London. Find him on Twitter or his website.

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
History/Biography

Before WW2, Warsaw Zoo was a fun place to take children to see both local and exotic animals. Jan and Antonina Zabinski are the caretakers of the zoo, living there with their son Rys. Their house is constantly full of baby or ailing animals as they keep care of them.

Things change when the war starts. The Germans take over Warsaw and set their camp up right outside of the zoo. A German zookeeper they knew from before the war comes and offers to take some of their animals away to German zoos so they aren't harmed, but the couple know this is actually a demand. Life gets more and more difficult, however the Zabinskis recognize the need to help their Jewish friends and neighbours. Soon, rather than housing animals, they are providing a refuge for Jewish families. Some stay for only a couple of days, others for quite a while longer.

The Zabinskis were, quite simply, heros. Yet they didn't look on what they did as heroic at all. Infact they seemed to enjoy the company of their visitors and though there were stressful moments, didn't look at it as troublesome. I'm in awe of this couple and can't believe I hadn't heard their story before reading this book. The book reads almost like a movie. I highly recommend this book!

First Line: "At dawn in an outlying district of Warsaw, sunlight swarmed around the trunks of blooming linden trees and crept up the white walls of the 1930s stucco and glass villa where the zoo director and his wife slept in a bed crafted from white birch, a pale wood used in canoes, tounge depressors, and Windsor chair."

Rating:
(4.5/5)

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
History

I have quite a few things to say about this book and unfortunately none of them are good things.

Let me start with my expectations, based on the title How the Irish Saved Civilization, I was expecting some fun facts of how, throughout history, the Irish have done great things that have affected the rest of the world. This wasn't the case. At all.

This book is a short little thing of 200 pages that reads like a university essay. I felt like I should be taking notes and highlighting passages. But I digress. Since the title does have "Irish" in it, I was quite surprised that the first 50 pages (25%) of the book had merely a handful of mentions of Ireland or Irish people. Instead, it was about Rome and the Roman culture. Then it was talk about Roman literature and classicism. Not exactly my favourite subject in the world.

Once the book finally got into Irish history, it was more on Irish folklore, religion in Ireland, and literature/modified classicism. Again, not my favourite subjects. This was when the book became more How Religion saved Ireland or How Catholicism in Ireland saved Religion. I can't tell you which one would be a better title for this book, because at this point, I stopped caring.

About the only good thing about this book is it's title. Unfortunately, the rest of the book doesn't live up to it.

First Line: "The word Irish is seldom coupled with the world civilization."

Rating:

(1/5)

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
History

This is the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Winchester gives background as to what preliminary versions of dictionaries were like and how writers before this time didn't have anything to refer to to check the right usage of the word they were using.

Then Winchester gets into the compilation of the OED and specifically how Professor Murray from Oxford was the one to spearhead the project, even though it took him about 40 years of his life and continued on after his death. We also learn about Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran who quite literally goes crazy and eventually shoots and kills someone, thinking that he was trying to do something bad to him. This lands Dr. Minor in a mental institution in England. One of the few things he finds pleasure in is reading, so when there is a call out for people to help find quotations of word in books, Dr. Minor is up to the challenge. He becomes one of the most helpful contributors to the OED.

I found this book was quite hit and miss for me. There were portions of it that were very interesting and other parts that weren't interesting at all. Murray and Minor's stories kept me interested, but some of the history behind everything bored me. If you're interested in the history of literature, you would enjoy this book!

First Line: "In Victorian London, even in a place as louche and notoriously crime-ridden as Lambeth Marshe, the sound of gunshots was a rare event indeed."

Rating:

(3.5/5)