Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Historians and the Second World War, 1945-1990

I had the privilege of taking an undergraduate history course taught by Richard Bosworth in 1988. This book is based on a part of that course, but was only published some years later. It is a book about historiography, that is, about the writing of history. It is not about chronology. It is a country-specific survey of the way historians, journalists, novelists, film-makers, politicians and others have thought of and portrayed the Second World War and their country's role in it. It is beautifully written, provocative, amusing and totally absorbing - not at all what you might expect of a "textbook". You do not need a detailed knowledge of the history of the war or of any particular country to appreciate it. It has been on my bookshelf for many years now and I have come back to it again and again, sometimes for a chapter, sometimes to re-read it cover-to-cover.