Books like War without mercy by John W. Dower

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

Places the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts, focusing on the two goals that drove the Nazis in their persecution of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and other groups they deemed as undesirables.

Drawing on surveys of public attitudes and analyses of more than forty years of television and newsmagazine stories on poverty, Gilens demonstrates how public opposition to welfare is fed by a potent combination of racial stereotypes and misinformation about the true nature of America's poor. But white Americans don't oppose welfare simply because they think it benefits blacks; rather, they think it benefits "undeserving" blacks who would rather live off the government than work, a perception powerfully fueled by the media's negative coverage of the black poor. The public's views on welfare, Gilens shows, are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor.

A critique of African American civil rights through the lens of race relations and racism in the United States.

"In making Sense of War, Amir Weiner reconceptualizes the entire historical experience of the Soviet Union from a new perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, Weiner situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet - not just the Stalinist - system. Through a richly detailed look at Soviet society as a whole, and at one Ukrainian region in particular, the author shows how World War II came to define the ways in which members of the political elite a well as ordinary citizens viewed the world and acted upon their beliefs and ideologies."--BOOK JACKET.

The Final Solution examines the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews, drawing on new research to analyze its causes, decision-making process, and the reactions of governments and peoples across Europe, the United States, and the Jewish world.

"Until now, the story of America's role in World War II has been presented primarily through the lives of powerful policymakers and generals, or through the heroism of American soldiers of predominantly European ancestry. Historian Ronald Takaki's multicultural history offers a different perspective. In Double Victory, history is told through the lives of ordinary, ethnically diverse Americans - a Tuskegee pilot wanting to fly and fight for freedom, a Navajo code talker using his native language to transmit battle messages, a Mexican-American woman riveting B-29 bombers in an airplane factory, a Japanese American feeling betrayed by his own government, and a Jewish-American soldier at Buchenwald pressing human ashes into his palm so that he would never forget what he had seen.". "What emerges from Takaki's study is the affirming story of how minorities fought for a "double victory" against fascism abroad and prejudice at home."--BOOK JACKET.