I decided to make a short list of the best historical books in my opinion. The list is small, with a short description.

The Greatest Generation

Tom Brokaw

In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out across the country to tell, through the stories of individual men and women, the story of a generation: America’s citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.

 

Citizens of London

Lynne Olson

The acclaimed author of Troublesome Young Men reveals the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its WWII alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain. Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill—so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister’s family.

 

The War That Ended Peace

Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, and bankers, and the extended interrelated family of crowned heads across Europe, who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke (“Moltke the Younger”); in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph I, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea.

 

Unbroken (Movie Tie-in Edition)

Laura Hillenbrand

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who struggled to a life raft and pulled himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.