Memories of World War II: Photographs from the Archives of the Associated Press

While AP did not produce all the good photographs of the war, it certainly produced a very large number. This selection of 170 b&w photos ranges in time from Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1934 to a flyover above the Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945. Nagasaki; concentration camp documentation; and burned out European towns mix with the (familiar) flag raising on Iwo Jima and the 28th Infantry Division marching through Paris. Depictions of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin together give way to an implacable column of Pacific Fleet warships. Sometimes there is even joy--a classic portrait of George Patton, the Happy Warrior, and a passionate kiss between sailor and nurse celebrating the end of the war. Introductions by Bob Dole and Walter Cronkite are up to the expected standard. The captions occasionally go astray, as on the Russian battle casualties, but the photographs mostly speak for themselves, and the book stands tall as a shelvable version of the exhibit at Washington, D.C.'s Union Station that it accompanies. It's been more than a generation since everybody grew up with ready access to many of these shots; this book brings them back splendidly.