What We Are Reading Today: The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars

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Updated 06 September 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars

  • By one reputable estimate, 9.7 million civilians and 9 million combatants died in World War I, while World War II killed 25.5 million civilians and 15 million combatants

Author: Cormac O Grada

Soldiers have never been the only casualties of wars. But the armies that fought World Wars I and II killed far more civilians than soldiers as they countenanced or deliberately inflicted civilian deaths on a mass scale. By one reputable estimate, 9.7 million civilians and 9 million combatants died in World War I, while World War II killed 25.5 million civilians and 15 million combatants.

But in The Hidden Victims, Cormac O Grada argues that even these shocking numbers are almost certainly too low.

Carefully evaluating all the evidence available, he estimates that the wars cost not 35 million but some 65 million civilian lives—nearly two-thirds of the 100 million total killed. Indeed, he shows that war-induced famines alone may have killed.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Updated 22 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Authors: John Y. Campbell and Tarun Tamadorai

We interact with the financial system every day, whether taking out or paying off loans, making insurance claims, or simply depositing money into our bank accounts. 

“Fixed” exposes how this system has been corrupted to serve the interests of financial services providers and their cleverest customers—at the expense of ordinary people.

John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai diagnose the ills of today’s personal finance markets in the US and across the globe, looking at everything from short-term saving and borrowing to loans for education and housing, financial products for retirement, and insurance. 

They show how the system is “fixed” to benefit those who are wealthy and more educated while encouraging financial mistakes by those who are aren’t, making it difficult for regular consumers to make sound financial decisions and disadvantaging them in some of the most consequential economic transactions of their lives.