Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival and field work on the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviews with German witnesses, presents overwhelming evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: that they went on “shopping sprees” for Jewish-owned goods and also brutalized Jews in the ghettos of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus; that they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also taking their turn at the mass shooting. And Lower uncovers the stories, perhaps most horrific, of SS wives with children of their own, whose female brutality is as chilling as any in history.

What it’s about (from Goodreads):

From Nazi-occupied Poland to a Chicago courtroom, Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and wealthy philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek. Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser, Ben Solomon, is convinced he is right. Solomon urges attorney Catherine Lockhart to take his case, revealing that Otto Piatek was abandoned as a child and raised by Solomon's family only to betray them during the Nazi occupation. But has he accused the right man? 

Our thoughts:

We would recommend this to:

WWII enthusiests, fans of historical fiction

What it’s about (from Goodreads):

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men flew into a severe storm and vanished.

Frozen in Time places us at the center of a group of valiant airmen fighting to stay alive through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter by sheltering from subzero temperatures and vicious blizzards in the tail section of the broken B-17 until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen attempts to bring them to safety.

In present-day Greenland, Zuckoff joins the U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar—a company led by the indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza, who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight—on a dangerous expedition to recover the remains of the lost plane’s crew.

Our thoughts:

Our thoughts:

Frozen In Time drew me in immediately. You know going in that the plane will crash and the story’s writing gives clues of the outcome, but I still found it unnerving when it happened and couldn’t wait to find out what was coming next. The story toggles back and forth from the original crash to the present-day hunt for the plane and despite being 70 years apart, I was struck by how similar the challenges were for both.

This was very similar to Zuckoff’s last book, Lost in Shangri-La, which I had also read. Swap the tropical habitat for snow and it’s practically the same story – with the exception of the fact that Zuckoff is a character in the story this time around. He tells the reader early on in the book that he helped fund the 2012 expedition – a fact that I worried would cloud how he presented the rest of the story – but the writing remained true to style. If anything, I think he downplayed the importance his contributions made to the effort.

We would recommend this to:

Fans of Lost in Shangri-La, fans of military history, World War II buffs and anyone who wants a real-life adventure.