In the 20th century, Germany suffered defeat in two world wars and withstood two kinds of dictatorship. Yet today it is Europe’s strongest economy. Hester Vaizey, fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and author of Born in the GDR, selects five brilliant books on a tumultuous century.

Why has anti-Semitism been such a problem down the ages, and why does it persist today? The emeritus director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, recommends some reading.

What are the key works of war writing? The Oxford Professor and poet chooses her five.

Author and founder of Virago Press decries the absolute silence of the church during the Holocaust, and discusses five books on the "dark and murky side" the French have now "faced up to"

Novelist Simon Mawer picks his favourite books on forgiveness.

In the years immediately after World War II, the Holocaust was little studied. That all changed with the publication of Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews. Steven Katz, professor of Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University and former Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, introduces the best books on the Holocaust.    

When reading books, we often empathize with a main character and find redemption in our emotional response to their fate. But it's more important to think, says Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon. Here, he picks the best books on 'man's inhumanity to man.'