Books like We Are at War by Simon Garfield

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.

A collection of linked short stories that follows a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences, thoughts, and burdens during the Vietnam War.

Ishmael Beah’s memoir chronicles his harrowing journey from a nine‑year‑old rebel fighter in Sierra Leone’s civil war to a survivor rehabilitated by UNICEF and later a storyteller traveling the United States.

John Keegan’s authoritative history of the Great War traces the political failures, battlefield campaigns, and human cost that reshaped Europe and the world.

A gripping and intimate account of the Second World War, from its start to its conclusion and beyond, capturing the complex and tragic events of one of the most pivotal eras in world history.

Minutely detailed, accurate, skilfully marshalled and engagingly written, it is quite the best social chronicle of the period I have read.' SpectatorAn immense and impressive assembly-Must surely remain an invaluable essay in the remembrance of things past. - TimesSuperbly detailed and illustrated. From stirrup pumps to Spam, Norman Longmate's marvellously comprehensive panorama misses nothing. Excellent. - Sunday TelegraphA landmine of information covering every field of civilian life in wartime from the grandeurs of the blitz to the miseries of dried eggs and the six-inch bath.Much of it is extremely interesting; some of it is fascinatingly out-of-the-way; and all of it contributes to building up a true picture of everyday life in England from September 1939 to August 1945. - ObserverFor those who lived through those wartime years, How We Lived Then will be not merely a refreshment of memory-but also an enlargement of experience; how other people we did not meet lived then. - Times Literary Supplement