The outpouring of new books on the Second World War continues unabated and, I suspect, will persist for another hundred years. Books on the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln have not slackened either and, in the case of the 16th President, have accelerated dramatically in the last few months. The Circa History Guild continues to add to their inventory the best in historical writing, old and new. As we commemorate World War II throughout January with programs by war veterans, we offer some of the best new books related to those times.

Occasionally a historian produces a major book which sets the standard for all future works on the subject or creates a book of such eminence that the likes of it will not be seen again in this generation. For example Douglas Southall Freeman wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning R.E. Lee in the first half of the 20th century and all subsequent biographies of the great southern general have been written in its shadow. In similar fashion author Rick Atkinson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the best book ever published on the U.S. campaign in North Africa: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43.

Atkinson takes us into the front lines of the nation’s first ground attack against the German and Italian forces, which would culminate within two years with the assault on France and ultimate German defeat in 1945. This book is the first of three entitled “The Liberation Trilogy”, which will recount the entire European war fought by the United States.

Volume two continues the story with the invasion of Sicily and the fight to conquer Italy (1943-1944). The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy continues the splendid retelling of the American army’s campaigns to defeat the Axis powers. The author is an experienced journalist who was raised in a military family and spent two months embedded in the 101st Airborne in the war in Iraq (In The Company of Soldiers). He knows the sights and smells of combat and has a keen grasp of both strategy and tactics. Atkinson is currently on leave of from The Washington Post, researching and writing his final book on the American army in Europe, due out in 2011.

Also at the Circa History Guild are several new works on the War in the Pacific. At War With the Wind by David Sears tells the story of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots whose mission was to dive their planes into American ships. Armed with one bomb and locked in from the outside, this tactic of the war pitted men who were determined to die against men determined to live. We have become all too familiar with men and women whose worldview leads them to intentionally sacrifice themselves to kill as many of their enemies as possible. Sears does a masterful job telling the stories of the young men from Japan who thought their suicide crashes brought honor and immortality and the young American men who were determined to splash the Japanese planes before they could bring harm to American ships.

Bill Potter