Secondhand History & Non-Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2735

A rich history and non-fiction box with a strong WWII backbone and impressive range on either side of it. Emmanuel Carrère's V13 — his account of the Paris attacks trial — is the standout: literary non-fiction of the highest order from one of France's most acclaimed writers. Alongside it sit Peter Hart's Victorian campaigns, Jeremy Duns's Cold War espionage, and a strong showing of WWII titles covering everything from Okinawa to the White Rose resistance. Peter Hitchens's The Phoney Victory will divide readers but provoke all of them. A serious box for readers who want more than the standard wartime canon.

1. The Eagle Unbowed — Halik Kochanski — A comprehensive history of Poland and the Poles across the entire span of the Second World War, tracking soldiers, civilians, resistance fighters, and exiles across multiple continents and theatres. Kochanski drew on archival sources in multiple languages to produce what is widely regarded as the definitive English-language account of Poland's wartime experience. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the full human cost of the conflict.
2. The Ancient Guide to Modern Life — Natalie Haynes — Haynes is a classicist, comedian, and broadcaster who argues that the ancient Greeks and Romans have more to teach the modern world than is generally acknowledged. This book moves across politics, sex, rhetoric, food, and entertainment to make the case with wit and genuine classical learning. An unusually enjoyable way into antiquity.
3. No Such Thing as Society — Andy McSmith — A social and political history of Britain in the 1980s, taking its title from Margaret Thatcher's notorious claim about the non-existence of society. McSmith covers the decade through its politics, culture, music, and industrial conflict with the eye of a journalist who lived through it. Lively, well-sourced, and eminently readable.
4. Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death — Timothy Taylor — Taylor is an archaeologist who argues that death is not a biological fact humanity simply discovered but a cultural invention actively constructed over millennia of burial practice. This book draws on archaeological evidence across cultures and periods to make an original and unsettling case about what makes us human. Thought-provoking and genuinely original scholarship.
5. The Spitfire Story — An account of the iconic British fighter aircraft that became the defining symbol of the Battle of Britain, tracing its design, development, and combat history. Essential reading for aviation and WWII enthusiasts.
6. Nuremberg — A documentary account of the postwar tribunal that established the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity and laid the groundwork for modern international law. The trial remains one of the most consequential legal proceedings in history, and this account gives close access to its proceedings and personalities.
7. [Title partially legible] — A historical or biographical work — the title is partially legible from the spine. Worth investigating for the reader who picks it up; the photo will show what the cover has to say.
8. Chain of Fire: Campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan 1882-1898 — Peter Hart — Hart is one of Britain's most rigorous military historians, and this book covers the Victorian campaigns in Egypt and Sudan — including Gordon at Khartoum and the Battle of Omdurman — with characteristic thoroughness and accessibility. Strong on the experience of ordinary soldiers on both sides, and essential reading for anyone interested in the late Victorian empire at war.
9. The Battle of Okinawa — George Feifer — Feifer's account of the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War draws on interviews with American and Japanese veterans conducted over many years, giving this book an authenticity that later works have struggled to match. The battle cost over 200,000 lives and shaped American thinking about the planned invasion of Japan. One of the finest single-volume accounts of any Second World War battle.
10. Ritchie Boy Secrets — Beverley Driver Eddy — The story of Camp Ritchie, the US military intelligence training facility staffed heavily by European Jewish refugees and immigrants who put their languages, cultural knowledge, and personal stakes to work against the Third Reich. This non-fiction account recovers a largely forgotten contribution to Allied victory — a remarkable chapter of WWII history that deserves to be far better known.
11. In Enemy Hands — Larry Zellers — Zellers's account of his years as a prisoner of the North Koreans following his capture as a missionary during the Korean War, covering a theatre and a set of experiences that rarely appear in the Western account of that conflict. First-person testimony from a largely overlooked corner of Cold War suffering.
12. Crusoe — Katherine Frank — A dual biography of Daniel Defoe and his most famous creation, examining how Robinson Crusoe emerged from its author's own complicated life and how the novel has since been implicated in debates about colonialism, race, and survival. Frank brings scholarly authority and biographical flair to a book most readers think they already understand. A genuinely illuminating work.
13. V13: Chronicle of a Trial — Emmanuel Carrère — Carrère attended the trial of the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks for nine months and produced this account: part courtroom reportage, part meditation on evil, justice, and what it means to survive catastrophe. Carrère is one of the foremost practitioners of literary non-fiction in the French tradition, and this is among his most powerful works. A book of lasting importance that belongs alongside the finest courtroom literature.
14. The Phoney Victory — Peter Hitchens — Hitchens argues that the British received understanding of the Second World War as a moral triumph is largely mythological, concealing strategic failures, diplomatic compromises, and social costs that have never been honestly reckoned with. Contrarian and deliberately provocative, but seriously researched. The kind of book that improves any library whether you agree with it or not.
15. Bushido: Code of the Samurai — A study of the Japanese martial and ethical code that governed samurai conduct and has continued to shape Japanese culture into the modern era. An important primary text for understanding Japanese history and the military culture that drove the Pacific War.
16. Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets — A documentary record of the White Rose resistance movement — the student group at Munich University who distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets until their arrest and execution in 1943. The Scholl siblings and their circle paid with their lives for this act of conscience; this volume preserves their words and the evidence of their courage.
17. Dead Drop — Jeremy Duns — The story of Oleg Penkovsky, the Soviet military intelligence colonel who secretly passed nuclear and missile secrets to the West in the early 1960s — intelligence that proved critical during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Duns writes with pace and precision about one of the Cold War's most consequential espionage operations. Gripping non-fiction that reads like a thriller.
18. 1959 — Fred Kaplan — Kaplan argues that 1959 was the year in which multiple forces — cultural, political, technological, musical — converged to reshape the modern world: Miles Davis, the Cuban Revolution, the first space probes, nuclear anxiety, and the birth of the counterculture all collide in a single extraordinary twelve months. An original and compelling work of cultural history.