Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. 2004. An excellent survey of Stalin’s labor camps.

Brendon, Piers. The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s. 2002. Masterful, sweeping account of this tumultuous decade.

Brooker, Paul. Twentieth-Century Dictatorships: The Ideological One-Party State. 1995. A comparative analysis.

Crowe, David M. The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath. 2008. Analyzes the origins and ghastly implementation of Nazi racial politics.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. 1999. Social and cultural history.

Geyer, Michael, and Sheila Fitzpatrick. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. 2008. Comparative studies of the two dictatorships based on archival sources that have only recently become available to historians.

Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War: A Complete History, rev. ed. 2004. Massively detailed global survey.

Glantz, David M. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. 1995. Authoritative account of the eastern front in World War II.

Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. 2005. Masterful diplomatic history with a controversial new account of the end of the war.

Hillberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, 1933–1945, 3d ed., 3 vols. 2003. A monumental classic.

Keegan, John. The Second World War. 1990. Broad survey by a distinguished military historian.

Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929–1939, 40th anniversary ed. 2013. Perhaps the best analytical account of the global origins, events, and aftermath of the Great Depression.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. 1947. First published in English as If This Is a Man; a memoir and meditation on the meaning of survival.

Parker, Selwyn. The Great Crash: How the Stock Market Crash of 1929 Plunged the World into Depression. 2008. A lively and readable account of the global consequences of the Great Depression.

Weinberg, Gerhard. World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, 2d ed. 2005. Global survey with a political-diplomatic emphasis.

Wright, Gordon. The Ordeal of Total War, rev. ed. 1997. Explores the scientific, psychological, and economic dimensions of the war.