Digest: January 2022

BOOKS IN WARTIME, 1942 (D 11292) Mrs Smith, and her husband Private Smith, consult an assistant in a book shop. Another soldier can be seen in the foreground, leafing through a book as he browses the shelves. According to the original caption, the changes made to books means that 'they can get more to a shelf nowadays'. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205199701

Welcome to our first Digest of 2022!

To kick off the new year, our Second World War Network has pulled together a short digest of Second World War-related books and articles published during the pandemic. We know that the last few years have been both busy and enormously challenging, but in amongst the chaos of the pandemic there have been so many publishing highlights in the field of Second World War Studies.

In September 2021 we hosted our first Expert Round Table. A recording is available to watch here, and we heartily recommend the texts from our panellists:

Alan Allport, Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938-1941, London: Profile Books Ltd., 2020, https://profilebooks.com/work/britain-at-bay/

Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: the British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fighting-the-peoples-war/4F5C050560E4DF0223A3D19982C11577

Lucy Noakes, Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719087592/

Beryl Pong, British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: for the duration, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/british-literature-and-culture-in-second-world-wartime-9780198840923?cc=us&lang=en&

Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: A New World: 1942-1947, London: Allen Lane, 2020, https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/291558/britain-s-war/9780141982823.html

Wendy Webster, Mixing It: Diversity in World War Two Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198735762.001.0001/oso-9780198735762

In addition, here are other books from 2020 and 2021 which caught our eye:

Steven Casey, The War Beat, Pacific: The American Media at War Against Japan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190053635.001.0001/oso-9780190053635

Jeremy Crang, Sisters in Arms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sisters-in-arms/44687016B16AF178384CB1E4657091C5

Sarah Frank, Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France, Nebraska: University of Nebraska, 2021, https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496207777/

David L. Hoffman (ed), The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, Abingdon: Routledge, 2021, https://www.routledge.com/The-Memory-of-the-Second-World-War-in-Soviet-and-Post-Soviet-Russia/Hoffmann/p/book/9780367701765#

Laure Humbert, Reinventing French Aid, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/reinventing-french-aid/116E698DBF2E193AF13035A4A9F9D19C

Harald Jähner, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955, London: WH Allen, 2021, https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1119643/aftermath/9780753557860.html

Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism, London: Harvard University Press, 2020, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984264

Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945, London: Allen Lane, 2021, https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106/106335/blood-and-ruins/9780713995626.html

Joanne Pettitt (ed), Covid-19, the Second World War, and the Idea of Britishness, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021, https://www.peterlang.com/document/1140530

Vike Martina Plock, The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-74092-4

Elizabeth D. Samet, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374219925/lookingforthegoodwar

Jeremy Taylor, Iconographies of Occupation: Visual Culture in Wang Jingwei’s China 1939-1945, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021, https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/iconographies-of-occupation-visual-cultures-in-wang-jingweis-china-1939-1945/

Finally, we’ve also received notification about these articles published during the pandemic:

David Edgerton, ‘The Nationalisation of British History: Historians, Nationalism and the Myths of 1940’, The English Historical Review, 136: 581, (August 2021), pp. 950-85, https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/136/581/950/6369662

James Greenhalgh, ‘The long shadow of the air war: composure, memory and the renegotiation of self in the oral testimonies of Bomber Command veterans since 2015’, Contemporary British History, 35:4, (June 2021), pp. 477-514, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.1906654

Charlie Hall, ‘“Flying Gas Mains”: Rumour, Secrecy, and Morale during the V-2 Bombardment of Britain’, 20^th Century British History, (September 2021), https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/tcbh/hwab029/6375997

Kate Imy, ‘Dream Mother: Race, gender, and intimacy in Japanese-occupied Singapore’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 52:3, (September 2021), pp. 464-91, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-southeast-asian-studies/article/abs/dream-mother-race-gender-and-intimacy-in-japaneseoccupied-singapore/13D4C517EAA848F24E927973C7BA428D

Tobias Kelly, ‘Pacifist Utopias: humanitarianism, tragedy and complicity in the Second World War’, Social Anthropology, 29:1, (March 2021), pp. 35-51, https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/202919814/KellyTSA2021PacifistUtopias.pdf

Peter Monteath and Katrina Kittel, ‘Prisoners of War to Partisans: Australian Experiences in Italy during the Second World War’, War & Society, 40:3, (July 2021), pp. 188-205, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07292473.2021.1942627

Catriona Pennell and Daniel Todman, ‘Introduction: Marginalised Histories of the Second World War’, War & Society, 39:3, (August 2020), pp. 145-54, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07292473.2020.1786896

Wendy Ugolini, ‘“The Band of Brothers”: The Mobilization of English Welsh Dual Identities in Second World War Britain’, The Journal of British Studies, 60:4, (July 2021), pp. 822-47, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/band-of-brothers-the-mobilization-of-english-welsh-dual-identities-in-second-world-war-britain/F34168A3EB836143A3AFF50529FECA2B

Jasmine Wood, ‘“Lashings of Grog and Girls”: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Rehabilitation of Facially Disfigured Servicemen in the Second World War’, War & Society, 40:4, (October 2021), pp. 296-314, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07292473.2021.1969172?journalCode=ywar20

We hope you enjoy this digest. We hope to make this a more regular event over the coming year.