Two recently issued Penguin paperbacks have just been issued. John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History was a Historynewsnetwork book of the month selection. Dramatic, intelligent, eloquent, it describes the influenza pandemic of 1918. Will also make you uncomfortable thinking about the possibility that today’s avian flu can again spread wreak havoc.

Norman Davies’ Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw is a seminal account based on Polish and Soviet sources about the Polish Resistance’s uprising on August 1944 against the German occupiers, only to be sabotaged by Stalin and the Allies. The Sunday Telegraph’s reviewer, Max Hastings, put it best: “ Norman Davies knows more about Poland than any other historian in the West…his knowledge and his passion—reflected in rage towards the Allies who betrayed the Rising—are displayed in this notable book.”