Writers on World War II: An Anthology

140 authors from around the world document the war they witnessed, fought, and sometimes lost their lives in. This is a stunning portrait of the central cataclysm of our cataclysmic century.

Here are William Shirer's stunned observations of Berlin as Germany announced its 1939 invasion of Poland and John Hersey's classic account of the dropping of the first atomic bomb six years later; Elie Wiesel's arrival at a place the world will never forget and kamikaze pilots' last letters home; William Manchester's recollection of boot camp and Genet's portrayal of Paris's liberation celebrations; and excerpts from the acclaimed wartime fictions of James Jones, Norman Mailer, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gunter Grass. And so it is with the unmistakable immediacy of the human voice that Writers on World War II conveys the enormities of those six convulsive years--the sheer scope of their terror, cruelty, and waste--and of the courage of those who endured them.