Joe Giorello Books in Order

If you want the broadest overview: Bunker Hill to WWI → World War I → WW2 Europe
If you like ancient warriors and empires: Ancients to Middle Ages
If you want early American history first: The American Revolution → Civil War
If you want World War II action: WW2 Europe → WW2 Pacific
If naval warfare sounds most fun: Epic Sea Battles

Joe Giorello grew up in a large Italian family in Queens, New York, and he has said that military history and the stories of veterans pulled him in early. That interest did more than give him a favorite subject. It helped turn him into a serious reader, which matters because reading later became the center of his work.

Years later, that old fascination came back in a very practical way.

As a father, Giorello saw that his third-grade son wanted little to do with books, but could happily spend hours on military history documentaries. At his wife's suggestion, he started writing battle chapters just for him. Those pages were short, direct, and built around action. They worked. His son wanted more, and before long other parents were asking for copies for their own boys.

That small home project grew into years of teaching. Giorello spent nearly a decade teaching military history classes around the Seattle area, and the classroom sharpened his style. Kids asked blunt, useful questions that adults often skip. What is a bayonet? Why were they fighting? Who was winning, and why? Questions like that pushed him to explain tactics, weapons, leadership, and politics in plain English.

He has also shared a few details that help explain the feel of his books. He researches battles carefully, writes longhand, and keeps the focus on what readers ages 8 to 12 can actually follow. Some of the earliest chapters were developed with help from his wife, Sibella Giorello, a novelist and journalist who helped shape the material into fast-moving narrative instead of textbook summary.

You can see that approach across WW2 Pacific, Ancients to Middle Ages, The Civil War, World War I, The American Revolution, and Epic Sea Battles. The books are nonfiction, but they move with real momentum. Readers who like short chapters, vivid details, maps, and clear explanations of what happened and why tend to connect with them quickly. Giorello returns again and again to courage, sacrifice, strategy, and the hard cost of freedom.

He is not trying to write a dry schoolbook.

He is trying to make history readable for kids who think they do not like reading at all.

That is why his work ranges from Ancient Greece and the Crusades to Yorktown, Gettysburg, the trenches of World War I, the beaches of Normandy, and the island battles of the Pacific. Famous names show up, but so do ordinary soldiers. Giorello seems most interested in the moment when a plan succeeds, fails, or suddenly falls apart, and in helping young readers understand why that moment mattered.

Now retired from sales and from years of teaching, he writes full time from the mountains of Arizona. He has also been involved with the Daisy Mountain Veterans Association, and he has spoken often about his respect for those who served. Away from the page, he enjoys working with horses and exploring battle sites in the American Southwest. It all fits the same pattern: history first, then the human stories inside it.