Lynne Olson Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Lynne Olson is an American published author.

She is a New York Times bestselling author who has written multiple history books. Most of the books focus on World War II as a topic. She has been called ‘our era’s foremost chronicler of World War II politics and diplomacy’ by Madeline Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State.

Some of her books that have been New York Times bestsellers include Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, Those Angry Days, and Citizens of London.

Lynne was born in Hawaii and attended the University of Arizona, where she graduated magna cum laude. Prior to becoming a full time author she was employed as a journalist for a decade. She first worked with the Associated Press as a national feature writer in New York and also worked as a foreign correspondent in AP’s Moscow Bureau and was a political reporter in Washington. She would leave the AP so that she could join the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun, covering national politics there and then the White House.

She is married to her husband Stanley Cloud. She resides in Washington, D.C., and has co-authored two books with her husband.

Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction is a 2023 book by Lynne Olson. If you really like nonfiction then be sure to check out this book and maybe find out more about a specific topic that you didn’t know as much about before! This is a great pick for individual reading or for book clubs.

In the sixties, the attention of the world was focused on a race that was going down against the international campaign to rescue a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the huge new Aswan High Dam. However, coverage of this rescue effort overlooked the daring French archaeologist who was able to make all of it happen.

The temples would be at the bottom of a large reservoir if it were not for the valiant intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, including the Temple of Dendur that is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was a very complex project that needed the fragile sandstone temples to be completely dismantled and then rebuilt on higher ground.

Determined and willful, Desroches-Noblecourt was someone who did not want to be cowed by anyone or anything. She was a member of the French Resistance in World War II, and made it out of being imprisoned by the Nazis. Through her fight to save the temples she chose to defy two of the most imposing leaders of the postwar world, Abdel Nasser (President of Egypt) and Charles de Gaulle (President of France). She told one reporter that you can’t get anywhere ‘without a fight’.

Desroches-Noblecourt was also able to get help from a very surprising source. Jacqueline Kennedy was the First Lady of America and was able to persuade her husband to assist with funding the rescue effort. After a century and a half of the West plundering the ancient monuments of Egypt, this author helped to preserve an important part of that cultural heritage. Read this book yourself to find out more details and engage with this very interesting true story!

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück is a 2025 book by Lynne Olson. This is a story of strength and enterprise, and of female solidarity as well as the nobility of spirit that can occur even when circumstances are their darkest and their most bleak.

In the decades after World War II, histories of the French Resistance were penned nearly exclusively by men and as a result would also ignore the contributions that women made. Many overviews of this subject continue to underplay the importance of women participating in the Resistance and treat the subjects like ‘an anonymous background element’ in a story that is ‘essentially male’.

This book corrects that omission, taking a look at the bond between four women who worked to fight Nazi oppression (Germaine Tillion, Anise Girard, Genevieve de Gaulle, and Jacqueline d’Alincourt). The women may have been part of different Resistance movements and networks, but they were also united by a common thing– they were arrested by the Gestapo, went through horrible interrogations and beatings, were jailed, and made it through all of it.

These women were able to survive the nightmare that was Ravensbrück, if only just barely. This was the only concentration camp out there that was made specifically for women. Stuck inside of an institution that was designed to take away humanity and kill, this sisterhood was able to maintain a sense of self and came together in order to take on death.

In World War II’s aftermath, the women came together to join forces and to try and find a way that they could rise above the horrors of war, turning it into something that was good for all of them and the world. This is an incredible account that you won’t want to miss. Check out this book and learn more about an impressive true story that may end up inspiring you!