Book Reviews
9 World War II Book Reviews for Winter 2026
Full ReviewsFighting Fifteen: The Navy’s Top Ace and the Deadliest Hellcat Squadron of the Pacific War (Stephen L. Moore, Dutton Caliber (PenguinRandomHouse), New York, NY, 432 pp., Read more
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
Stephen L. Moore’s ‘Fighting Fifteen’
By Kevin SeabrookeMany of the men in the new VF-15 Fighter Squadron had three things in common: a love of flying and the desperate desire to fly fighters in combat. Read more
Book Reviews
Flint Whitlock’s ‘Patton and the Battle for Sicily’
By Kevin SeabrookeLaunched on the night of July 9-10, 1943, the amphibious assault of Operation Husky was the largest the world had ever seen—more than 3,200 vessels and half a million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen attacked the island of Sicily, Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” Read more
Book Reviews
David Lyle Williams ‘The Road to Cisterna’
By Kevin Seabrooke
The Battle of Anzio (January 22-May 25, 1944) was aimed at bypassing the German’s daunting Gustav Line in an effort to capture Rome. Read more
Book Reviews
Raquel Ramsey’s ‘Reflections’
By Kevin SeabrookeDuring the Japanese invasion of the islands in December 1941, 2nd Lt. Edwin Ramsey commanded the U.S. Army’s 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts) in rearguard action that allowed Allied forces to fall back to the Bataan Peninsula. Read more
Book Reviews
Mark Stille’s ‘Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Greatest Disaster’
By Kevin Seabrooke
Author Mark Stille bemoans the “continuing flood of Pearl Harbor books [that] focus on the failure to avoid conflict in the months before the attack or on the deeply flawed concept that ‘Washington’ conspired to let the Japanese take the first shots of the war while not informing the commanders at Pearl Harbor what was coming.” Read more
Book Reviews
Christine Kuehn’s ‘Family of Spies’
By Kevin SeabrookeA screenwriter’s letter asking what her father, 70-year-old Eberhard Kuehn, remembered about his own father’s life as a spy in WWII turned journalist Christine Kuehn’s world upside down. Read more
Book Reviews
Donald Nijboer’s ‘World War II Aerial Combat 1937-1945’
By Kevin SeabrookeBeginning with the Battle of Britain and going forward, it was clear that military aviation would become a critical component of modern warfare. Read more
Book Reviews
Elizabeth R. Hyman’s ‘The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto’
By Kevin SeabrookeLed by the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB) (Jewish Combat Organization), the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April/May 1943 against the German SS remains one of the most famous struggles in the annals of the Holocaust. Read more
Book Reviews
Bruce Henderson’s ‘Midnight Flyboys’
By Kevin SeabrookeFlying classified missions under the cover of darkness to support underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe is not the kind of volunteer work that garners much contemporary press. Read more
Book Reviews
Gregory Wolk’s ‘John Frémont’s 100 Days’
By Kevin SeabrookePresident Abraham Lincoln appointed John C. Frémont as a major general on May 15, 1861, and gave him command of the U.S. Read more
Book Reviews
Flint Whitlock’s ‘Patton and the Battle for Sicily’
By Kevin SeabrookeLaunched on the night of July 9-10, 1943, the amphibious assault of Operation Husky was the largest the world had ever seen—more than 3,200 vessels and half a million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen attacked the island of Sicily, Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” Read more
Book Reviews
Robert Cowley’s ‘The Killing Season’
By Kevin SeabrookeIn August 1914, Germany implemented its Schlieffen Plan with 1.7 million soldiers sweeping through Belgium and northern France to envelop and crush the French and British armies. Read more
Book Reviews
David Lyle Williams’ ‘The Road to Cisterna’
By Kevin SeabrookeOperation Shingle, better known as the Battle of Anzio (January 22-May 25, 1944), was aimed at bypassing the German’s daunting Gustav Line in an effort to capture Rome. Read more
Book Reviews
Christine Kuehn’s ‘Family of Spies’
By Kevin SeabrookeA letter from a screenwriter researching WWII in 1994 turned journalist Christine Kuehn’s world upside down. The writer wanted to know what her father, 70-year-old Eberhard Kuehn, remembered about his own father’s life as a spy. Read more
Book Reviews
Joe Jackson’s ‘Splendid Liberators’
By Kevin SeabrookeThe explosion of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, Cuba’s Havana harbor, did not directly result in war with Spain—but with the help of the “yellow press” and public opinion it did escalate tensions between the two countries. Read more
Book Reviews
Richard Bell’s ‘The American Revolution and the Fate of the World’
By Kevin SeabrookeGrowing up in Britain, naturalized American citizen and University of Maryland history professor Richard Bell learned almost nothing in school about the American Revolution. Read more
Book Reviews
David A. Powell’s’ ‘The Atlanta Campaign: Volume 2
By Kevin SeabrookeRecognizing that the Confederacy could not win a war of attrition, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered five simultaneous offensives in the spring of 1864 in a strategy to exhaust Southern resources and manpower. Read more
Book Reviews
Steven C. Eames’ ‘Rustic Warriors’
By Kevin SeabrookeIn the pre-Revolutionary War era of the New England colonies, provincial soldiers fought a series of wars against New France and its Native American allies, with mixed results. Read more
Book Reviews
Mark Stille’s ‘Pearl Harbor’
By Kevin SeabrookeA wave of 177 Japanese aircraft approaching the U.S Naval base at Oahu’s Pearl Harbor became visible at 7:48 a.m. Read more
