MATC Libraries

Approved Reading List for Europe and the Modern World (Ryan)

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Note: Click on a title to see more information; a new window will open. A print copy of this list is also available at the Truax library circulation desk.

909.097 P844
The lion's share : a short history of British imperialism, 1850-1983 / Bernard Porter.

909.0971241J27
The rise and fall of the British Empire / by Lawrence James.

909.81 Z25
Holy madness : romantics, patriots, and revolutionaries, 1776-1871 / Adam Zamoyski.

909.82 EK36
Rites of spring : the Great War and the birth of the Modern Age / Modris Eksteins.(A weird, wandering, but wonderful analysis of the link between World War I and the creation of modernity. Eksteins connects elite artistic movements and popular culture with the horror of the trenches—a great book that remains unselected!

914.203 B854
Victorian people; a reassessment of persons and themes, 1851-67.

940.0491497 F841
The gypsies / Angus Fraser.

940.284 ST79
1848: the revolutionary tide in Europe / Peter N.Stearns.

940.28 AN54
The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914 / M.S. Anderson.

940.283 B65
In the beginning : the advent of the modern age, Europe in the 1840's /Jerome Blum.

940.3 G46
The First World War : a complete history / Martin Gilbert. (A good narrative study by a prolific historian.)

940.3 G786 V.2
The Great World War, 1914-45 / edited by Peter Liddle, John Bourne, Ian Whitehead.

940.3 K26
The First World War / John Keegan. (One of the best British historians, Keegan’s study is first-rate; student reviewers interested in military history should consider selecting this book.)

940.3 M167
Paris 1919 : six months that changed the world / Margaret MacMillan.

940.3 P173
Victory, 1918 / Alan Palmer.

940.3 ST847
Cataclysm : the First World War as political tragedy/ David Stevenson.

940.3 ST894
The First World War / Hew Strachan.

940.3 T894
The great war, 1914-18 / Spencer C. Tucker.

940.31 J34
The lions of July : prelude to war, 1914 / William Jannen, Jr.

940.311 F931
Europe's last summer : who started the Great War in 1914? / by David Fromkin.

940.311 M4
Dreadnought : Britain, Germany, and the coming of the great war / Robert K. Massie. (A solid narrative history that’s much better than Massie’s work on Russia’s Romanov dynasty.)

940.33493 Z94
The rape of Belgium : the untold story of World War I / Larry Zuckerman. (Students who have selected Zuckerman’s book have found it interesting and easy to follow. A good study of Germany’s occupation of Belgium—although Zuckerman fibs when he claims the story is “untold.”)

940.439 W42
A stillness heard round the world : the end of the Great War,November 1918 / Stanley Weintraub.

940.4 N397
Fighting the Great War : a global history / Michael S. Neiberg

940.41247082 ST873
They fought for the Motherland : Russia's women soldiers in World War I and the Revolution / Laurie S. Stoff

940.458 M135
To the last man : spring 1918 / Lyn Macdonald.

Reserve 940.46
Fallen soldiers: Reshaping the memory of the world wars / Mosse, George L. (George Lachmann), 1918- (A hugely significant book that explains how France and Germany shaped the ways the “The Great War” was remembered.)

940.5218 R47
Masters of death : the SS-Einsatzgruppen and the invention of the Holocaust / Richard Rhodes. (An informative if unspectacular book that student reviewers have liked.)

940.53 D344
Auschwitz and after / Charlotte Delbo ; translated by Rosette C. Lamont

940.53 G46
The Second World War : a complete history / Martin Gilbert. (A solid, traditional Gilbertian analysis of World War II.)

940.53 G784
Women's identities at war : gender, motherhood, and politics in Britain and France during the First World War / Susan R. Grayzel. (An important comparative history of World War I—excellent book.)

940.53 H87
Hitler's war / Edwin P. Hoyt. (An analytically scanty but serviceable narrative history of World War II.)

940.53 K26
The Second World War / John Keegan. (Another excellent Keeganian contribution to twentieth century military history.)

940.53083 N598
Cruel world : the children of Europe in the Nazi era / Lynn H. Nicholas

940.5311 T238
The origins of the Second World War / A.J.P. Taylor. (A controversial book that created a (and continues to create a) a stir when it was first published in the 1960s—students familiar with inter-war diplomatic history will find this book interesting, possibly irritating, but enjoyable.)

940.5311 W34
How war came : the immediate origins of the Second World War,1938-1939 / Donald Cameron Watt. (This is the A. J. P. Taylor antidote!)

940.5314 B786
Nazi gold : the full story of the fifty-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to steal billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust survivors / Tom Bower. (A fast-moving and engrossing account on the sickening financial dealings between the Nazis and Swiss banks. Future (and current) business majors may find this book especially engrossing.)

940.5315 F597
Hitler and the final solution / Gerald Fleming ; with an introduction by Saul Friedlander.

940.5315 G46
The Holocaust : a history of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War / Martin Gilbert. (A solid if analytically unspectacular survey of the Holocaust by an excellent historian.)

940.5317 H535
The blessed abyss : inmate #6582 in Ravensbruck concentration camp for women / Nanda Herbermann ; translated by Hester Baer ; edited by Hester Baer and Elizabeth R. Baer.

940.5318 AR68
Eichmann in Jerusalem : a report on the banality of evil / Hannah Arendt.

940.5318 B885
The origins of the Final Solution : the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939-March 1942 / Christopher Browning ; with contributions by Jurgen Matthaus. (Browning is one of the premier historians of the Holocaust—this is an excellent study of the early phases of the Holocaust’s implementation.)

940.5318 EI34C
Becoming Eichmann : rethinking the life, crimes, and trial of a "desk murderer" / David Cesarani

940.5318 G465
Kristallnacht : prelude to destruction / Martin Gilbert. (Student reviewers love Gilbert’s narrative account of “Crystal Night.”)

940.5318 G618
Hitler's willing executioners : ordinary Germans and the Holocaust / Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.

940.5318 G46
The boys : the untold story of 732 young concentration camp survivors / Martin Gilbert. (A gripping, emotional study.)

940.5318 L678
The Nazi persecution of the gypsies / Guenter Lewy.

940.5318 R328
Auschwitz : a new history / Laurence Rees.

940.5318 ST819
Auschwitz: a history / Sybille Steinbacher.

940.5318 W817
Hitler and the Holocaust / Robert S. Wistrich.

940.5318 Z94IT
The Italians and the Holocaust : persecutiuon, rescue, and survival / Susan Zuccotti ; introduction by Furio Colombo. (A solid study that makes some rather ill-advised comments that have perhaps led to this book’s being harshly criticzed.)

940.53180922 G465
The Righteous : the unsung heroes of the Holocaust / Martin Gilbert. (An moving study.)

940.5344082 D537
Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948 : choices and constraints / Hanna Diamond.

940.5344082 W436
Sisters in the Resistance : how women fought to free France, 1940-1945 / Margaret Collins Weitz. (A pioneering book when it was first published, Sisters in the Resistance sparked other Resistance studies that have arguably surpassed it; still, Weitz’s book is student-friendly and no one has negatively reviewed it.)

940.53477 B512
Harvest of despair : life and death in Ukraine under Nazi rule / Karel C. Berkhoff

940.5421 K26
Six armies in Normandy : from D-Day to the liberation of Paris / John Keegan. (Keegan’s study spills more ink examining non-American forces than does Ambrose’s study of D-Day. If you’re interested in a less American-centered account of D-Day, opt for Keegan’s study.)

940.5421 L95
The duel : 10 May-31 July 1940 : the eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler / John Lukacs.  (A good narrative history.)

940.5421 ST779
Ten days to D-Day : citizens and soldiers on the eve of the invasion / David Stafford. (This is an interesting book that utilizes a great deal of oral history taken from regular “Joe’s” and “JoAnne’s” to tell its story. A narrative history that is student friendly.)

940.542142 AM49
D-Day, June 6, 1944 : the climactic battle of World War II / Stephen E. Ambrose. (A good analysis but Ambrose pays short shrift to American and British forces who suffered heavy casualties during D-Day.)

940.54217 P726
Stalin's folly : the tragic first ten days of World War II on the Eastern front / Constantine Pleshakov

940.5421721 C886
Enemy at the gates; the battle for Stalingrad / by William Craig. (An engaging study that has recently been brought back into print.)

940.5423092 R766R
Rommel : the end of a legend / Ralf Georg Reuth ; translated by Debra S. Marmor and Herbert A. Danner.

940.5488 AR761
The illusion of victory : fascist propaganda and the second World War / W. Vincent Arnold.

940.5488743 B499
Hitler's airwaves : the inside story of Nazi radio broadcasting and propaganda swing / Horst J.P. Bergmeier, Rainer E. Lotz. (A dense and detailed examination of how the Nazi’s used mass propaganda.)

940.55 M476
Dark continent : Europe's twentieth century / Mark Mazower.

940.55 T772
Transnational moments of change : Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 / edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn and Padraic Kenney. (A difficult but interesting collection that argues the nation-state may hamper rather than increase understanding of important historical events—especially good for Eastern and Central Europe.).

941.074092 C292F
The unruly queen : the life of Queen Caroline / Flora Fraser.

941.081 W746
The Victorians / A.N. Wilson.

941.081092 C47
Victoria : the young queen / Monica Charlot.

941.081092 W42
Victoria : an intimate biography / Stanley Weintraub.

941.084092 C563G
Churchill : a life / Martin Gilbert.  (A straightforward but arguably uncritical one-volume account of Churchill.)

941.084092 C563K
Winston Churchill / John Keegan. (Go with Gilbert’s study; Keegan’s biography is a bit short and impressionistic.)

941.6 C769I
The IRA : a history / Tim Pat Coogan. (Engagingly written account by one of Ireland’s most famous journalists—probably a better selection for those students with prior knowledge of modern Irish history.)

941.6 D621
Northern Ireland : the politics of war and peace / Paul Dixon.

941.6 EN58
Armed struggle : the history of the IRA / Richard English. (If you’re interested in a more comprehensive and thorough account of the IRA, go with this book.)

943.08 EV92
The coming of the Third Reich / Richard J. Evans. (Wonderful survey!)

943.085 W436
Weimar Germany : promise and tragedy / Eric D. Weitz

943.086 B961
The Third Reich : a new history / Michael Burleigh. (A decent survey but consider checking out Burleigh’s other books.)

943.086 F418
Plotting Hitler's death : the story of the German resistance / Joachim Fest ; translated by Bruce Little. (Fest may overemphasize the extent of resistance to Hilter but this is a lucid and engaging analysis.)

943.086 G318
Backing Hitler : consent and coercion in Nazi Germany / Robert Gellately. (Gellately’s book is not comforting because it argues that Germans supported the Nazis far more enthusiastically than is popularly believed.)

943.086 J66
Nazi terror : the Gestapo, Jews, and ordinary Germans / Eric A. Johnson.

943.086 K19
Hitler youth / Michael H. Kater.

943.086 M913
Nazi culture : intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich / by George L. Mosse ; translations by Salvator Attanasio and others.

943.086072 N492
Shifting memories : the Nazi past in the new Germany / Klaus Neumann.

943.086092 H658B
The architect of genocide : Himmler and the final solution / Richard Breitman.

943.086092 H675B
Hitler and Stalin : parallel lives / Alan Bullock. (Bullock’s study is excellent!)

943.086092 H675K
Hitler, 1889-1936 : hubris / Ian Kershaw. (Arguably the best English-language biography of Hitler—this is the first volume.)

943.086092 H675KN
Hitler, 1936-45 : nemesis / Ian Kershaw. (Arguably the best English-language biography of Hitler—this is the second volume.)

943.087 SM667
From Yalta to Berlin : the Cold War struggle over Germany / W.R. Smyser.

943.0874 N157
The Russians in Germany : a history of the Soviet Zone of occupation, 1945-1949 / Norman M. Naimark.

943.0879 M563
German unification in the European context / Peter H. Merkl ;with a contribution by Gert-Joachim Glaessner.

943.155 D261
Home fires burning : food, politics, and everyday life in World War I Berlin / Belinda Davis.

943.60522 B932
Hitler's Austria : popular sentiment in the Nazi era, 1938-1945 / by Evan Burr Bukey.

943.705 IN58
Czechoslovakia : the short goodbye / Abby Innes. (An excellent revisionist account of the disintegration of Czechoslovakia.)

943.805 P122
The spring will be ours : Poland and the Poles from occupation to freedom / Andrzej Paczkowski ; translated by Jane Cave.

943.84 G98
Resistance : the Warsaw Ghetto uprising / Israel Gutman.

943.9052 G261
Failed illusions : Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian revolt / Charles Gati

944.035092 M334L
Marie Antoinette : the last queen of France / by Evelyne Lever ; translated from the French by Catherine Temerson.

944.035092 M334F
Marie Antoinette : the journey / Antonia Fraser.

944.05092 N21EL
Napoleon / Geoffrey Ellis.

944.05092 N21EN
Napoleon : a political life / Steven Englund.

944.05092 N21H
The legend of Napoleon / Sudhir Hazareesingh

944.05092 N21S
Napoleon Bonaparte / Alan Schom.

944.081 SO731
France since 1870 : culture, politics and society / Charles Sowerwine.

944.0812 W37
France : fin de si*ecle / Eugen Weber.

944.0815 D964
France and the Nazi threat : the collapse of French diplomacy 1932-1939 / Jean-Baptiste Duroselle

944.0816 J13
France : the dark years, 1940-1944 / Julian Jackson.

944.0816 J13F
The fall of France : the Nazi invasion of 1940 / Julian Jackson.

944.0816 V782
The unfree French : life under the occupation / Richard Vinen

944.20814 M172
The long silence : civilian life under the German occupation of northern France, 1914-1918 / Helen McPhail.

944.361 H638
Paris : capital of the world / Patrice Higonnet

944.72 C791
The village of cannibals : rage and murder in France, 1870 / Alain Corbin

945.091 B747
Mussolini's Italy : life under the dictatorship, 1915-1945 / R.J.B. Bosworth. (An excellent study of life in Europe’s first “totalitarian” regime.)

945.091 D668
Remaking Italy in the twentieth century / Roy Palmer Domenico.

945.091092 M989B
Mussolini / R.J.B. Bosworth. (An wonderfully written biography of Mussolini that challenges historians who have tried to see the good in Il Duce.)

945.091092 M989F
Mussolini : a new life / Nicholas Farrell. (A good biography but Bosworth’s is a bit better.)

946.08 P346
Fascism in Spain, 1923-1977 / Stanley G. Payne. (Superb analysis of Spanish fascism by an internationally renowned [now retire] UW-Madison historian.)

946.08 P346F
The Franco regime, 1936-1975 / Stanley G. Payne. (Tremendous book by an amazingly erudite historian.)

946.081 ES75
Spain at war : the Spanish Civil War in context, 1931-1939 / George Esenwein and Adrian Shubert.

947 K36
A carnival of revolution : Central Europe 1989 / Padraic Kenney. (A wonderful book that gives most of the credit for the collapse of the Communist Bloc in Europe not to Gorbachev, not to Ronald Reagan, but to regular Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, and Slovaks! A wonderful, nuanced, and uplifting analysis.)

947 K85
The Soviet colossus : the rise and fall of the USSR / MichaelKort.

947 SM648
The post-Soviet states : mapping the politics of transition / Graham Smith.

947 SU958
The Soviet experiment : Russia, the USSR, and the successor states / Ronald Grigor Suny.

947.07 R969
Russia--women--culture / edited by Helena Goscilo and Beth Holmgren.

947.0738 R891
Crimea : the Great Crimean War, 1854-1856 / Trevor Royle.

947.08 L741
In war's dark shadow : the Russians before the Great War / W.Bruce Lincoln.

947.08092 R227F
Rasputin : a life / Joseph T. Fuhrmann.

947.081092 AL376R
Alexander II : the last great tsar / Edvard Radzinsky

947.083 M417
The Romanovs : the final chapter / Robert K. Massie.

947.083 SA16
Black night, white snow ; Russia's revolutions, 1905-1917 / Harrison E. Salisbury.

947.083092 N597L
Nicholas II : twilight of the Empire / Dominic Lieven.

947.083092 R13
The last Tsar : the life and death of Nicholas II / Edvard Radzinsky

947.084 C3
Stalin, order through terror / Helene Carrere d'Encausse ;translated by Valence Ionescu.

947.084 P66R
The Russian Revolution / Richard Pipes. (A fine survey by a politically conservative historian. Great book!)

947.084 ST78
The Stalin revolution : foundations of the totalitarian era. / Robert Vincent Daniels.

947.084 ST78T
Stalin in power : the revolution from above, 1928-1941 / Robert C. Tucker. (Although Tucker uses a bit of psycho-history that is now a tad unfashionable, this is a thorough and intriguing biography of Stalin. Personally, I prefer Stalin as Revolutionary.)

947.08401092 L566S
Lenin : a biography / Robert Service.

947.084092 B927B
Moura : the dangerous life of the Baroness Budberg / by Nina Berberova

947.084092 T858V
Trotsky : the eternal revolutionary / Dmitri Volkogonov ;translated and edited by Harold Shukman. (Despite its title, this is not a traditional chronologically organized biography of Trotsky. The translation has resulted in a book that has about one hundred fewer pages than the original Russian language study.)

947.0841 M46
The Russian Civil War / Evan Mawdsley. (A solid study of a chaotic era in Russian history.)

947.0841 P66
Russia under the Bolshevik regime / Richard Pipes.

947.0842 C487
Enemies within the gates? : the Comintern and the Stalinist repression, 1934-1939 / William J. Chase

947.0842 T536
Life and terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 / Robert W. Thurston. (A revisionist account of Stalin that contends “the Red Tsar” was not necessarily in control of all aspects of the Soviet Terror.)

947.0842092 C75
Stalin : breaker of nations / Robert Conquest. (Conquest has written lengthily and movingly of the tens of millions who died as a result of Stalin’s reign, and he does again in this book.)

947.0842092 K7
Beria, Stalin's first lieutenant / Amy Knight.

947.0842092 ST785
Stalin : a biography / Robert Service. (Service had access to sources unavailable to other scholars, so this is a provocative and interesting biography.)

947.084092 T858V
Trotsky : the eternal revolutionary / Dmitri Volkogonov ;translated and edited by Harold Shukman.

947.0845 ST874
The walls came tumbling down : the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe / Gale Stokes. (Stokes’ account of 1989 is easy to follow and is presented country by country.)

947.0854 R387
Lenin's tomb : the last days of the soviet empire / David Remnick.

947.0854 ST913
Why did the Soviet Union collapse? : understanding historical change / Robert Strayer

947.41 R24
Estonia and the Estonians / Toivo U. Raun.

949.507 G163
Modern Greece / Thomas Gallant.

949.6 G377
The Balkan wars : conquest, revolution, and retribution from the Ottoman era to the twentieth century and beyond / Andr*e Gerolymatos.

949.6 G558
The Balkans : nationalism, war, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 / Misha Glenny.

949.6 K17
Balkan ghosts : a journey through history / Robert D. Kaplan.

949.7 C67
Broken bonds : the disintegration of Yugoslavia / Lenard J.Cohen.

949.7 L237
Yugoslavia as history : twice there was a country / John R. Lampe.

949.702 AU94
Tito; a biography.

956.015 K18
Empires of the sand : the struggle for mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 / Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh.

956.102 AH286
The making of modern Turkey / Feroz Ahmad.

958 M613
Tournament of shadows : the race for empire in Central Asia / by Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac.

958.1015 P17
The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire / Alan Palmer.

958.408 B128
Central Asians under Russian rule : a study in culture change / by Elizabeth E. Bacon

960.3 P152
The scramble for Africa : white man's conquest of the dark continent from 1876-1912 / Thomas Pakenham. (The conquest of African told from a largely European perspective but a story well told.)

960.312 W515
Divide and rule : the partition of Africa, 1880-1914 / H.L. Wesseling ; translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. (More scholarly than Pakenham’s gripping narrative but an excellent academic survey of the “scramble for Africa.”)

967.5 H685
King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in Colonial Africa / Adam Hochschild.

967.6203 EL43
Imperial reckoning : the untold story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya / Caroline Elkins.

968 M16
Bantu, Boer, and Briton; the making of the South African native problem. / Macmillan, William M. (William Miller), 1885-1974.

968.04092 R476R
The founder : Cecil Rhodes and the pursuit of power / Robert I. Rotberg, with the collaboration of Miles F. Shore.

968.204 P15
The Boer War / Thomas Pakenham.

363.1799 AL384
Voices from Chernobyl / Svetlana Alexievich ; translation and preface by Keth Gessen

306.0943 B557
Germany after the First World War / Richard Bessel

364.1523 W813
The Italian boy : a tale of murder and body snatching in 1830s London / Sarah Wise

J. Ryan / D. Marconnet

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Last Modified: September 10 2008