The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel of World War II

By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

• HISTORICAL FICTION PAGE-TURNER: Combines the accessible prose and old-fashioned storytelling of Pitts’s previous novels with a deeply researched historical setting


• CELEBRATED AUTHOR: Author is a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist with a three-times-weekly newspaper column syndicated nationally in 200+ newspapers in dozens of major US markets


• PROVEN TRACK RECORD: Pitts’s 2012 novel, Freeman, was a national bestseller, with rave reviews from All Things Considered, the Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly, as well as endorsements by Jennifer Weiner, Gabrielle Union, and Gwen Ifill


• MASSIVE PLATFORM: Author has an engaged, passionate, and steadily growing following of 30k on Twitter


• BOOK CLUB APPEAL: Accompanying reading group guide includes discussion questions and a Q&A with the author


• HISTORICAL SETTING: Story unfolds during World War II in three theaters of the war—the Pacific, Europe, and America’s Deep South—between 1941 and 1945


• POPULAR CATEGORY: Will appeal to the kinds of readers who embraced recent WWII-era bestsellers like Beneath a Scarlet Sky (108,000 copies sold) and Mudbound (184,000 copies sold).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Agate Bolden
• Release date: Feb 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781572848245

Reviews for The Last Thing You Surrender

[booksandbutter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have never loved a book more. This is a difficult read, but so important. The history was woven so expertly into a Fiction novel. It explains the what was happening at the time between races during WWII. I saw someone asked “What book changed your life?” recently on social media. While I think “changing my life” is a stretch, I definitely think this gave me a different perspective and details I didn’t know before reading the novel that will stay with me long after I have read it.

[weavingmom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The author is a mensch. He understands people and his characters are so real. The reader learns American history in a gripping, moving way. One of the best books of historical fiction. I love Thelma, Luthier, George, Jazzman.