I recently finished reading All Quiet on The Western Front and Johnny Got His Gun, so I’m kind of on an anti-war literature binge. Suggestions?
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller is a classic. I’m sure other posters will mention this one.
I read Catch 22 a few years ago. It was a good book, and also a good suggestions, thanks. Anymore?
I would also suggest The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.!
I quite liked the original book MAS*H. Better’n the movie and the tv series anyway.
Slaughterhouse 5, as noted by Blowero. It presents a spectacular counterargument to those that believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the worst things that happened in WWII.
“War and Peace” by Tolstoi
Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk
** Born on the Fourth of July ** by Ron Kovic.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
“The Short-Timers,” by Gustav Hasford.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque. Looks at WWI from a German perspective. Really good. Highly recommend it.
Company K by William March. Best episodic U.S. war novel before Catch-22.
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. Actually, the First World War is only foreshadowed in this novel, but it’s still one of the great German novels of the 20th century.
You might also enjoy The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.
I’m not sure I read the book that way. My understanding is just the opposite - Vonnegut was an all-round peacenik, saying all war is bad, fire-bombing of Dresden was not militarily justified, and neither was Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For the record - I can cite material that proves Dresden was an important center of military production at the time the book is set.
Try “Fly Away Peter” by David Malouf or “A Month In The Country” by J.L. Carr. Not exactly the same “type” of books others are recommending but both still carry an anti-war message. Of course you can’t go past “All Quiet”, but you’ve already read that! Brilliant!
I don’t know that Dr. Richard Hornberger (who used the alias Hooker) would appreciate being considered “anti-war.” He was a rock-ribbed Republican, a patriot, and a hawk, and he HATED what Alan Alda did to Hawkeye.
He tried to describe war as it is, with all the gore, all the gallows humor, and all the frequent absurdities that come with it- but he never doubted for a minute that communism was evil and that the Korean War was necessary.
Can’t say I agree with some of the recommendations - despite the fact that I’m far from a “peacenik” <grin>, I found Catch-22 to be so poorly written I put it down in disgust after about a chapter and a half - I found Heller’s narrative style and some character names to be particularly childish. Never really got far enough into it to see for myself if it was “anti-war”.
Still, only a lunatic wishes for war, some of us just have a lower threshhold of “this is necessary” than others - and some don’t think it’s ever necessary. So, if you’re interested in the favorite “truthful” war books of a guy who’d be considered something of a conservative “hawk” (any book that gives a feeling of what war is like, or a truthful, detailed historical account of it, drives home the human cost of warfare and the fact that war, even a necessary one, is always a bad thing), I recommend:
War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk (I just finished reading this one…excellent fiction framed in true events)
Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden - he does a pretty good job of not moralizing or trying to put his own opinions across, and relies on the horror that our soldiers went through to let you form your own opinion on the events covered in the book.
The Mighty Eighth by Gerald Astor - a history of the USAAF’s European bombing campaign written from interviews with the men who flew the missions.
Kilt-wearin’ man
Winds of War & War and Remembrance are IMHO, possibly the best book(s) I have ever read. Certainly the one who’s characters and events I remember best, and have returned to again and again for inspiration. I cry every time I read the last chapter.
For relevance to this thread - the closing sentence defines it for me …
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer.
The book is purportedly an autiobiography, although some of have raised dounts about the veracity of that claim. Regardless, whether it’s fact or fiction, you will learn what it means to be a soldier in a war. Brutalized and brutal. Alone. Frightened. Mortal.