Well, if you're looking for a novel based on organized crime in the US, you can't go wrong with Mario Puzo's The Godfather!

It's not a book, but the CBS series produced in 1964 about World War I is excellent and fascinating. I think it is especially interesting because it uses a great deal of achival footage that, although in black and white, is fresh and clear and detailed. I believe a different film process was used during that time - the film did not deteriorate in the manner that film used later on does. The older film process was, however, quite dangerous i.e. highly flammable. The episodes are relatively short, maybe 25 minutes or so, making them very easy to view. Both this series and the companion series produced by the BBC have stood the test of time and manage to be both entertaining and informational. I recommend them highly.

The more recent PBS series is also wonderful, and has a companion book, entitled something like, "The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century." Excellent book, full of photos.

Don't forget T.E. Lawrence, 'Lawrence of Arabia,' still a dashing and enigmatic figure in this new century. Lawrence's own writings as well as the many books written about him are worth a look, as well as David Lean's epic film (personally, I watch this film once a year or so - it never fails to interest me).

I guess you can tell that I am a bit of a WWI buff!

Some great YA reads about WW1 and WW2....
Private Peaceful ~ Michael Morpugo A compelling story of 2 underage teens who sign up to fight in WW1.

The Pied Piper ~ Nevil Shute A classic. During the summer of 1940, an elderly Englishman on holiday agrees to ferry two young children out of France. As the war closes in, more children join the trek to the coast and hoped for safety. Also, A Town Called Alice .

The Forger ~ Paul Watkins On the eve of WW 2, a talented young painter is convinced to duplicate the master paintings housed in the museums of Paris before the German army invades the city.

Postcards From No ManÂs Land ~ Aidan Chambers A teen returns to Amsterdam to honour his grandfather who fought there in WW2 14++

Daniel Half Human:And The Good Nazi ~ David Chotjewitz The life of a teen in 1930Âs Germany. Excellent historical fiction.

Mimi & ToutouÂs Great Adventure ~ Giles Foden. Tanzania during WW1;The British Royal Navy assigns the seemingly impossible task of trekking two ships overland through the African bush to meet and battle a fleet of German ships controlling Lake Tanganyika. The motley crew of Brits are led by an eccentric lunatic, Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson. Nonfiction, Mimi and Toutou are the names of the 2 British shipsÂ.

For WWI, Anne Perry has started a new series consisting of No Graves as Yet, Shoulder the Sky, and Angels in the Gloom, published in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

I especially like River of Darkness featuring an English dectective returned to work but recovering from trench warfare by Rennie Airth (1999). He did a second one this year called The Blood-Dimmed Tide with the same main character but after a 20-year hiatus.

In a similar vein, Charles Todd has a series featuring a detective haunted (literally) by a fellow soldier whom he had to have shot for refusing to continue to fight. He is hated by his superior at Scotland Yard and given all the impossible cases, which, of course, he solves. There are several of these, beginning with A Test of Wills published in 1996.

You might want to look these over before giving them to youngsters. They are not filled with sex and gore, but they may be more intense than you would like. However, if they like the Mafia . . .

Thanks much for the help...lots of books I've never encountered. I'm also passing on the film recommendations to my sister (high school history teacher always looking for good video presentations). She can bring it home to preview and the whole family can enjoy it.

Right or wrong, I believe one of the joys of being an Auntie is I'm not required to censor reading material or behavior. I just love those boys and send them home to mom for moral lessons. I think I'll try those Anne Perry books for my own enjoyment though--I always like to have one mystery on my pile.

For the Mob books, there are several books out about John Gotti and there is another called Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi about being a mob underling. The movie Goodfellas was based on this book. There are excerpts on Amazon.

Here are a few exciting true stories of fighters who escaped from the enemy--more about cleverness than killing: WWII: Stolen Journey, by Oliver Philpot Escape Alone (also published under the title We Die Alone), by David Howarth (The main character is a Norweigian whose skiing ability features large in his escape.) This one from WWI is both exciting and funny (if you don't mind wading through some preparatory biographical material in chapters 1 and 2) as well as being true: The Spook and the Commandant, by C.W. Hill

Well, I see that italics are not working, nor did the message preserve the line breaks I put in, so just to avoid confusion, that should be ...Oliver Philpot, Escape Alone... I spelled Norwegian wrong, too. Tsk, tsk!

Thanks--I understood anyway. This forum has a unique personality. People actually care and correct their mistakes. Some other forums..... Uhmm, members just aren't as well spoken. Enough said. It's just an interesting group of people here.

I know it's getting late for shopping, but it is interesting to me that probably the 2 most famous WWII books aren't on here: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I highly recommend both. I read the Heller when I was in my teens and thought it was laugh-out-loud funny. Russ

The best WW II novels I know are by Alan Furst, all the protagonists are unimportant people caught up in the war--usually getting involved with spying in some way or other. The recreation of the period is phenomenal, and the characters compelling, though they might be a trifle too sophisticated for teens. For adults, I also recommend two memoirs, now pretty much forgotten. I ran across reference to them in some other book I was reading a few years ago. One is called The Walls Came Tumbling Down and is by a Dutch woman who was imprisoned as a political prisoner. When the Germans fled the prison camp, she and several friends had to figure out how to get home. Very interesting. The other is Three Came Back (I hope I have the name right.) An American woman, her husband and very small son are trapped in southeast Asia when the war breaks out and survive the war in a Japanese internment camp. Also very good.

Oh, yes, Three Came Back is very good. As I recall, one thing that helped the family--especially the husband, who was treated rather brutally--survive was the fact that the woman was a writer and had had a book published in which she wrote favorably about Japanese people. One of the Japanese in charge of the camp had read the book.

So Darenka-the rule is you have to come back and tell us what you bought......;-)

Bedford Boys