Introducing: The Library
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
Of the 544 books in the Catastrophe's Library, all but a select few are dedicated to some kind of history—a subject I find myself endlessly enamored by. The library covers a wide range of non-fiction history, from the Vietnam War and the Troubles in Ireland to the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement, along with rich deep dives into specific figures like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, Oskar Schindler, and Samantha Power.
Of the 544, 396 focus on WWII—whether it is Auschwitz, Stalingrad, Okinawa, or Nuremberg; each one has offered a new understanding of the catastrophe.
I have shared Amazon links for the sake of efficiency. However, please consider shopping locally or at a Black-owned bookstore.
Enjoy!
1. White Knights in the Black Orchestra: The Extraordinary Story of the Germans Who Resisted Hitler
By Tom Dunkel
Category: The Third Reich, The Germans, Japan, and World War II
Page: 384 • Published: 2013
Rating: TBR
White Knights in the Black Orchestra: The Extraordinary Story of the Germans Who Resisted Hitler
Synopsis: As the "Final Solution" unfolds, a loose network of German military officers, diplomats, politicians, and civilians are doing everything in their power to undermine the Third Reich from the inside: reporting troop movements to the Allies, feeding disinformation to the Nazi high command, plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and more. The Gestapo nicknames this shadowy confederation of traitors the "Black Orchestra." Its players include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident Lutheran pastor, and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a staff attorney at the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.
Read It: White Knights in the Black Orchestra
2. The Storm is Here: An American Crucible
By Luke Mogelson
Category: American Hx White Nationalism, MAGA, Insurrection
Audio: 11 Hours 28 minutes • Published: 2022
Rating: 5.0/5.0
Synopsis: After years of living abroad and covering the Global War on Terrorism, Luke Mogelson went home in early 2020 to report on the social discord that the pandemic was bringing to the fore across the US. An assignment that began with right-wing militias in Michigan soon took him to an uprising for racial justice in Minneapolis, then to antifascist clashes in the streets of Portland, and ultimately to an attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C. His dispatches for The New Yorker revealed a larger story with ominous implications for America. They were only the beginning.
This is the definitive eyewitness account of how—during a season of sickness, economic uncertainty, and violence—a large segment of Americans became convinced of the need to battle against dark forces plotting to take their country away from them. It builds month by month, through vivid depictions of events on the ground, from the onset of COVID-19 to the attack on the US Capitol—during which Mogelson followed the mob into the Senate chamber—and its aftermath. Bravely reported and beautifully written, The Storm Is Here is both a unique record of a pivotal moment in American history and an urgent warning about those to come.
My Take: A breathtaking read. This is the best book I have ever read on January 6 and the surrounding elements that played out in the days after the insurrection. Read: January 6 in Four Book
Read It: The Storm is Here: An American Crucible
2. Year Zero: A History of 1945
By Ian Buruma
Category: The Third Reich, The Germans, Japan, and World War II
Page: 384 • Published: 2013
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Synopsis: Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after the War came to an end in 1945. One world had ended, and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, the Philippines, and, of course, Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.
My Take: A breathing-takingly rich read.
Read It: Year Zero
3. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
By Timothy Snyder
Category: Holocaust / Mass Murder in the East
Pages: 596 • Published: 2022
Rating: 5.0/5.0
Synopsis: Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.
My Take: Timothy Snyder can do no wrong.
Read It: Bloodlands
5. 12 Seconds Of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon
By Jamie Holmes
Category: The Third Reich, The Germans, Japan, and World War II
Pages: 320 • Published: 2002
Rating: 4.2/5.0
Synopsis: The riveting story of the American scientists, tinkerers, and nerds who solved one of the biggest puzzles of World War II—and developed one of the most powerful weapons of the war
12 Seconds of Silence is the remarkable, lost story of how a ragtag group of American scientists overcame one of the toughest problems of World War II: shooting things out of the sky.
Working in a secretive organization known as Section T, a team of physicists, engineers, and everyday Joes and Janes took on a devilish challenge. To help the Allies knock airplanes out of the air, they created one of the world’s first “smart weapons.” Against overwhelming odds and in a race against time, mustering every scrap of resource, ingenuity, and insight, the scientists of Section T would eventually save countless lives, rescue the city of London from the onslaught of a Nazi superweapon, and help bring about the Axis defeat. A holy grail sought after by Allied and Axis powers alike, their unlikely innovation ranks with the atomic bomb as one of the most revolutionary technologies of the Second World War. Until now, their tale was largely untold.
For fans of Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre, set amid the fog of espionage and dueling spies at the dawn of an age when science would determine the fate of the world, 12 Seconds of Silence is a tribute to the extraordinary wartime mobilization of American science and the ultimate can-do story.
My Take: A thrilling must-read
Read It: 12 Seconds Of Silence
6. The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb
By James Kunetka
Category: The Atomic Bomb, Japan, and World War II
Pages: 480 • Published: 2015
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Synopsis: With a blinding flash in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1945, the world was changed forever. The bomb that ushered in the atomic age was the product of one of history's most improbable partnerships. The General and the Genius reveals how two extraordinary men pulled off the greatest scientific feat of the twentieth century. Leslie Richard Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers, who had made his name by building the Pentagon in record time and under budget, was made overlord of the impossibly vast scientific enterprise known as the Manhattan Project. His mission: to beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. So he turned to the nation's preeminent theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimerthe chain-smoking, martini-quaffing son of wealthy Jewish immigrants, whose background was riddled with communist associationsGroves's opposite in nearly every respect. In their three-year collaboration, the iron-willed general and the visionary scientist led a brilliant team in a secret mountaintop lab and built the fearsome weapons that ended the war but introduced the human race to unimaginable new terrors. And at the heart of this most momentous work of World War II is the story of two extraordinary menthe general and the genius.
Read It: The General and the Genius
KG 2025
thanks for this substack - easier and 'nicer' to read than your contributions on reddit