101 War Movies You Must See Before You Die (Steven Jay Schnieder)

An amazing book that puts together all the great movies about war. Not only does it gives you some good war movie tittles to consider, everything is also categorized into different period of time (from the 1910s to the 1960s) making everything much easier when you try to search for your movies from the period of time you want to know more about. There are also movie reviews.

International Baccalaureate Course Companions

Like the name of the book, this is specially written for the IB Diploma Programme. For that reason, it has everything from the syllabus in there. There is one small problem though. This book is not in an appropriate order so you might find it's problematic when trying to find facts - some of the facts are in bits and pieces throughout the book. Still though, if you want an official book for the History course, this would be it.

The First World War 1914-18 (Vyvyen Brendon) & Europe at War, 1939-45 (Graham Darby)

 These are the two books about both World Wars. They can get quite informative. However, they are again good sources for facts. Everything you need to know about both wars from the start to the end and from the Eastern Front to the Western Front can be found in these two books alone. 

Mastering Modern World History (Norman Lowe)

This book is really a precious asset for History students. The notes and information is chronological put together. The information is condensed but still very informative and enough for your exam revisions (a potential method that helps you to avoid cramping pages after pages of notes when revising). Everything in the route 2 syllabus is in here (it probably covers the other route too but since I only took route 2, that's all I know). I was pretty amazed at how the author could squeeze in everything about Mao that I need to know for my syllabus into less than 20 pages.

Hitler and Nazism (Jane Jenkins)

This is an excellent and informative book about Germany under Hitler that combines the domestic issues with the different historians' interpretations such as:

• "Hitler - a weak dictator or master of the Third Reich?"
• "Was Hitler consistent in his ideas?"
• "Did Hitler plan for total war?" 

Once again, this has all the essential information and interpretations you need to get those high marks. 

The Origins of the First and Second World Wars (Frank McDonough)

To get the high scores especially the ones in the level 7, you need to have:

• "Different approaches to, and interpretations of, historical events and topics are explained and placed in their historical context" 
• "At the upper end of this markband the answer will in addition display at least one of the following features: a highly developed awareness of historiographical issues"

This book has exactly all that. It has all the different historians' interpretations about the origins of both the First and the Second World Wars (e.g. Fischer thesis & A.J.P Taylor). More importantly, this book provides an objective and informative analysis of different factors contributing toward the outbreak of the wars (e.g. imperialism & Hitler's rise to power). Above all, it has official and original documents like letters and speech. This book is put together in an easy-to-understand order starting with the First World War, all its contributing factors and historians and the same goes for the Second World War. 

Origins of the Second World War (A.J.P Taylor)

A lot of you might have heard of A.J.P Taylor, a well-respected historian. In this book, he puts together all his insightful thoughts and interpretations about the cause of the Second World War. Once again, this book is definitely good to read as it carries objective analysis, those types of things that not many people think of. He speaks from a critical viewpoint to analyse factors such as Hitler's policies and provide the evidences he found regardless of whether it follows the stereotypical viewpoint (e.g. he provides evidence that shows Hitler to be an innocent man in the outbreak of the war).

'Highly original and penetrating...No one who has digested this enthralling work will ever be able to look at the period again in quite the same way' - Sunday Telegraph