Sorry, I don't know your real name!

I saw in your Lost Symbol post that you like history books. I just finished reading a couple of great history books about WWII by Thomas Childers. Have you read him?

If not, I highly recommend Wings of Morning and Soldier from the War Returning. Summaries below.

[Wings of Morning] Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, recounts the haunting story of one 12-man U.S. bomber crew during WWII. On a bombing run over Regensburg, on the eve of the German surrender, their B-24 Liberator was downed so swiftly by flak that only two crewmen could parachute to safety. One of those who perished was the author's uncle, Howard Goodner. This account is the product of his family's curiosity about Sgt. Goodner's tour of duty. Childers's detective work and reconstruction is impressive, covering training in the States, life on and off the base in England and the bombing missions over enemy territory. The narrative has extra depth and dimension from the focus on worried families of the airmen and the different ways each coped with the loss of its son. The book reads like a novel. One of the more interesting "subplots" concerns the demoralization of one crewman, as Childers evokes this man's dread between flights. Childers visited the crash site and interviewed German villagers, who provided details about the bomber's destruction and the disposition of the crewmens' bodies.

[Soldier from the War Returning] Conventional impressions of WWII's aftermath—wild celebration, triumphal return, ebullient prosperity—hide a grimmer reality, according to this somber history of postwar discontents. University of Pennsylvania historian Childers (In the Shadows of War) uses contemporary statistics and press reports to sketch the hardships returning veterans faced, including unemployment and homelessness; resentment at the years wasted in the war; alienation from family, friends and civilian life in general; and physical and psychological wounds that never healed. He builds his account around biographical narratives of three veterans: an infantryman who lost his legs to an enemy shell; an airman taken prisoner by the Germans; and Childers's father, who spent the war relatively safe in England but whose life and marriage, the author contends, were subtly darkened by the conflict. Childers's beautifully written, novelistic profiles movingly convey his subjects' wartime travails and their twilight struggles with disability and post-traumatic stress. His attempt to blame decades of dysfunction on the war sometimes overreaches; his subjects' failed marriages, business reversals and unfulfilling jobs often seem like the ordinary quiet desperation of men's lives. Still, Childers's absorbing study offers an important corrective to sanitized tributes to the Good War's legacy. Photos.

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My name is Taylor. Thanks for the ideas, I have about 5 books "in queue" so I'll look to adding those in the future.

Only 5??
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I think my TBR list is about 30.