For those who're done with World War classics, here's a less-touted but equally significant list of titles
My interest in the Second World War (WWII) can be traced back to the time when a grand-aunt presented me with a copy of Life’s Picture History Of World War II—a giant (the length and width stood out more than the thickness), red leather-bound copy. This was around 30 years ago and the book, I was told, had gone “out of print”. It was, then, a treasured collection of some of the best war pictures from Life magazine, taken during that period (1939-1945), chronologically arranged with captions and limited additional text.
The book became a precursor to a much longer journey through the many words of war. And to a whole new appreciation of associated works: Consider that even Commando comics started to make a little more sense.
Over the years, I have tried reading different genres of literature related to the World Wars, but mostly the second one. I discovered literature pertaining to the First World War I (WWI) only much later. And realised that the volume of work was such that one couldn’t hope to read even a reasonable fraction of it in one lifetime.
There were the classics: The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer; The Diary Of Anne Frank by Anne Frank, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins among others.
And, of course, I read them all.
Then, those done, I discovered other books: All as enthralling but relatively under the radar, pointing to the fact that ‘greatness’ and ‘fame’ for a book are subjective and personal—as is my selection of the following five titles.
Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika
by Giles Foden
(This story appears in the Jan-Feb 2015 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)