War books

The veteran reporter and frequent visitor to Afghanistan tells us about the country he loves, and the Westerners (and Central Asian conqueror) who wrote engagingly about it.

Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study views art, literature, politics and war as intimately interconnected and says cultural attitudes directly affect military doctrine. He chooses five books on war & intellect

The author and political blogger chooses five books on the Israel-Palestine conflict and compares the Palestinians to the Jews in diaspora: as the land disappears under their feet, their identity grows stronger.

The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.

Postwar Europe was a scene of both physical and moral destruction. Keith Lowe, author of the award-winning Savage Continent, recommends essential reading for understanding the sheer scale of suffering, dislocation and fighting after the war was over.

Historian and novelist James Holland talks us through some of his favourite memoirs and novels about the Second World War and explains his lifelong fascination with the global conflict.

It was a bloody conflict that divided Spain and drew in Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Later, it inspired great works of art and literature. An eminent historian of the period tells us why it continues to fascinate him

Glorified by Russia, glossed over by the West, the siege of Leningrad is rarely seen for what it was – a tragic story of tremendous suffering and death. The author of Leningrad, Anna Reid, tells us what really happened there

Genocide isn’t the preserve of fanatics and racist thugs – it’s part of human nature, says Stanford historian Norman Naimark. He tells us how genocide happens, who denies it, where it could return, and the best books to read about it.

Our TV screens may be full of news about war and crime, but this masks a fall in historical terms in the number of violent deaths that’s nothing short of astonishing, says Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. He tells us how and why this happened. (This interview was updated 17 December, 2020, to include books that have come out since it was published in 2011)