World War 2

An amazing book I read recently was Worshipping the Myths of World War II, written by Edward Wood, a combat veteran of World War II. Wood was an 18-year-old thrown into battle in France after D-Day in June of 1944 with virtually no military training.

In the decades just prior to the eruption of the American civil rights movement in the late '50s, Chester Himes was one of the most significant African-American authors -- although today he is less well known than several of his contemporaries.