This year I've logged just over thirty books on history. Though I love history, I've noticed my desire to read historical books has been waning. I'm not sure why that is? My love for fiction and nonfiction swings back and forth like a pendulum, and this year it's leaned heavily towards fiction. Walter Lord's A Night to Remember is the classic retelling of the R.M.S. Titanic disaster, and Erik Larson gives a similar treatment to the sinking of the Lusitania during World War One. Cecil Lewis' Sagittarius Rising is an excellent memoir of air combat during the First World War. The last three books revolve around the Second World War, and all three are memoirs. Interestingly, the first two - Eckhert's D-Day Through German Eyes and Faust's Tiger Tracks - are presented as memoirs but are likely fabricated; nevertheless, even skeptical historians praise them for their gritty authenticity and ability to capture, in spirit and prose and (at times) poetry, what combat was really like. Rozell's The Things Our Fathers Saw is a collection of first-hand memoirs from the Pacific Theater in World War Two.
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