For Americans World War II was "a good war," a war that was worth fighting. Even as the conflict was underway, a myriad of both fictional and nonfictional books began to appear examining one or another of the raging battles. These essays examine some of the best literature and popular culture of World War II. Many of the studies focus on women, several are about children, and all concern themselves with the ways that the war changed lives. While many of the contributors concern themselves with the United States, there are essays about Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Japan.

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all. “A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer “A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonweal

Winner of the 2014 Dean Batchelor Award, Motor Press Guild "Book of the Year" Short-listed for 2015 PEN / ESPN Literary Award for Sports Writing Before noon on May 30th, 1964, the Indy 500 was stopped for the first time in history by an accident. Seven cars had crashed in a fiery wreck, killing two drivers, and threatening the very future of the 500. Black Noon chronicles one of the darkest and most important days in auto-racing history. As rookie Dave MacDonald came out of the fourth turn and onto the front stretch at the end of the second lap, he found his rear-engine car lifted by the turbulence kicked up from two cars he was attempting to pass. With limited steering input, MacDonald lost control of his car and careened off the inside wall of the track, exploding into a huge fireball and sliding back into oncoming traffic. Closing fast was affable fan favorite Eddie Sachs. "The Clown Prince of Racing" hit MacDonald's sliding car broadside, setting off a second explosion that killed Sachs instantly. MacDonald, pulled from the wreckage, died two hours later. After the track was cleared and the race restarted, it was legend A. J. Foyt who raced to a decisive, if hollow, victory. Torn between elation and horror, Foyt, along with others, championed stricter safety regulations, including mandatory pit stops, limiting the amount a fuel a car could carry, and minimum-weight standards. In this tight, fast-paced narrative, Art Garner brings to life the bygone era when drivers lived hard, raced hard, and at times died hard. Drawing from interviews, Garner expertly reconstructs the fateful events and decisions leading up to the sport's blackest day, and the incriminating aftermath that forever altered the sport. Black Noon remembers the race that changed everything and the men that paved the way for the Golden Age of Indy car racing.

Dark Noon is the mesmerizing re-creation of a fateful day at sea. It is also a story of the postwar American dream as experienced in the fishing village of Montauk, Long Island, where fish were money and where optimism and success went hand in hand. And it’s a story of the end of an era, when one terrible disaster changed the fishing culture of a prosperous port forever. “Meticulously researched. A fascinating story.”--Distinction “A first-rate reportorial job that builds to a taut and suspenseful climax of incredible detail. The harrowing description of men gaff-hooked out of the churning swells is unforgettable.”--The Independent

Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl’s father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. From the steamy streets of New Orleans to the bone-chilling Korean landscape, award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair.

When Nole Darlen kills his father—the man who has built the largest house anyone in these East Tennessee hills has ever seen—the single resounding gunshot sets up a dark patchwork of memory and expectation that gathers-up townspeople, hill-folks, lovers and outlaws. Here is a tangled tale involving the dead man’s wife, neighbor Burlton Hobbes, desperado Jem Craishot, and a grizzled muskrat-trapper named Hogeye. Central to the story is a pistol that Nole Darlen has taken from a card game the night before the murder. The pistol becomes a totem to Nole, an embodiment of the frustrations and failures that have dogged his life. He envies and fears the outlaw, Jem Craishot, wishing he, too, could be “fearsome,” but descends, instead, into cowardice and betrayal. Eventually, the gun becomes a central element of the novel’s twisted story, a talisman of murder, and a key to the book’s shocking ending. Richard Hood brings to bear his deep roots in rural East Tennessee. The plots and subplots of Regret the Dark Hour are based on true stories. The house still exists, the patricide really happened, the outlaw—Jem Craishot—is based upon the legendary Kinny Wagner, whose exploits derive from this time and region. The novel’s social and cultural backgrounds are accurate, and call-up the rich heritage of East Tennessee. The novel has been called “Southern Gothic Noir,” and Hood describes it as an “anti-mystery.” There is never any doubt about who killed Carl Darlen, but the story turns and weaves through the day of the murder and ends with a startling, dark, surprise. Here is a story of family violence—its simmering causes and smoldering consequences—set against the clashing tensions of old-and-new, fiddle-tunes and factories, among the hills and coves of prohibition-era East Tennessee. Praise for REGRET THE DARK HOUR: “Richard Hood’s Regret the Dark Hour is a search for Regional Truth and the ways memory, representation, and history intertwine to produce stories, interpretation, and character. This novel is a triumph—giving us the sound and flavor of prohibition-era East Tennessee, in a mix of voice, perception, and blindness embedded within the darkly tangled story of a family murder.” —Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina and author of Paul’s Hill: Homage to Whitman; Our World and Nin’s Poem “Regret the Dark Hour calls up a story of betrayal, forbidden love, and familial violence in prohibition-era Appalachia. Hood’s stunning and lyrical writing vividly captures the world of this forgotten time period. A beautiful debut and wonderful addition to southern noir.” —Jen Conley, author of Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry