It's all about me

Okay, I'll get the ball rolling. A book I really want to read is Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941. If you can't wait to know what those decisions were, go here and click on the Table of Contents. This looks fascinating to me. Paperback version is just a little over 12 bucks on Amazon, so it should fit within any monetary limit set by the powers that be.

World War II is my favorite historical subject to read about. Actually, the two wars and the periods leading up to them I find extremely interesting, the period from about 1900-1945. The only other periods of history that come close in interest for me are the American founding and the Romans. Regarding the American founding, if anyone is interested, two books by Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation and American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic are simply outstanding.

I've taken a break from reading history lately but I'm ready to jump back in. For a couple of years just about all I read were histories, a lot of big histories, 600, 700, 800 pages tomes. Doorstops, if you will. But I kind of hit a wall early this year and decided to read some lighter fare. So this year has been dedicated to novels and essay collections. The last history I read was back in February, Rick Atkinson's The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, the second volume of his Liberation Trilogy about the Allied campaigns in Africa and Western Europe. The first volume, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, which I also read, won the Pulitzer for history a few years back. Both books are brilliant. The final volume, dealing with the Normandy invasion and the march to Berlin, should be out next year.

So there you have it, the book I'm most looking forward to read over the Christmas holidays, plus a few suggestions for your own reading pleasure. So what say you? What's your book? What are you dying to read?