A non-fiction history related book

[JstnH2007]

For my history class we need to find a non-fiction history book from 1950-present...It can be about anything as long as it pretains to history..so ya'll tell me if you know any good book. Thanks!

 

[novella]

Great amusing true-life WWII memoirs about working in cryptography. It's called Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. He's a great writer (went on to be a Hollywood screenwriter) with a lot of cool stories to tell. It came out maybe two years ago and might be in paper by now.

Does the book have to be after 1950 or does the period of history it covers?

 

[Ell]

How about Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda byRomeo Dallaire.

It's a Governor General's (Canada) award winner and looks fascinating. It's on my TBR list.

From the Publisher:
On the tenth anniversary of the date that UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada is proud to publish the unforgettable first-hand account of the genocide by the man who led the UN mission. Digging deep into shattering memories, General Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism and international politics. His message is simple and undeniable: “Never again.”

When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was heading off on a modest and straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned and suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only a hundred days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes the reader with him on a return voyage into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings.

Woven through the story of this disastrous mission is Dallaire’s own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, reconciliation and hope. This book is General Dallaire’s personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth and secure in his assumptions to a man conscious of his own weaknesses and failures and critical of the institutions he’d relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to General Dallaire and his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields our peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into the world’s dirty wars

 

[Cathy C]

*Published* post-1950, or ABOUT post-1950?

And is this for world history, or the history of a particular country?

 

[mehastings]

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

Tony Horwitz travels across the American South, and a couple points North of the Mason Dixon Line exploring modern feelings about the Civil War. My favorite quote by far is "I'm not an American, I'm a citizen of the Confederate States of America, which has been under military occupation for the past hundred thirty years". I wonder where horwitz managed to find some of these people. Although the book sounds like it would be about the Civil War it touches more on modern politial climate, racism, resentments and assumptions between the North and South.

Anyway, the book is really interesting and I would highly recomend it.