# Suggested anti-war novels?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 13, 2003, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263 "2003-01-13T07:11:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@fishcrawford](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishcrawford)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/1 "2003-01-13T07:11:09Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/2 "2003-01-13T07:17:04Z")
_Catch 22_ by Joseph Heller is a classic. I’m sure other posters will mention this one.
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### Author:  [@fishcrawford](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishcrawford)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/3 "2003-01-13T07:19:50Z")
I read Catch 22 a few years ago. It was a good book, and also a good suggestions, thanks. Anymore?
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### Author:  [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/4 "2003-01-13T07:45:28Z")
I would also suggest _The Red Badge of Courage_ by Stephen Crane.
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### Author:  [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/5 "2003-01-13T09:00:43Z")
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.!
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### Author:  [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/6 "2003-01-13T11:25:57Z")
I quite liked the original book **M_A_S\*H**. Better’n the movie and the tv series anyway.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/7 "2003-01-13T12:14:03Z")
_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.
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### Author:  [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/8 "2003-01-13T13:55:54Z")
“War and Peace” by Tolstoi
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### Author:  [@Jabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jabba)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/9 "2003-01-13T14:09:58Z")
Jaroslav Hasek, _The Good Soldier Svejk_
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/10 "2003-01-13T14:11:32Z")
\*\* Born on the Fourth of July \*\* by Ron Kovic.
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### Author:  [@Peutl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peutl)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/11 "2003-01-13T14:13:21Z")
_The Forever War_ by Joe Haldeman
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/12 "2003-01-13T14:15:28Z")
“The Short-Timers,” by Gustav Hasford.
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### Author:  [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/13 "2003-01-13T14:23:44Z")
**All Quiet on the Western Front** by Remarque. Looks at WWI from a German perspective. Really good. Highly recommend it.
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/14 "2003-01-13T14:32:57Z")
**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**.
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### Author:  [@rampisad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rampisad)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/15 "2003-01-13T14:42:47Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@psychotropic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychotropic)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/16 "2003-01-13T15:17:10Z")
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!
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/17 "2003-01-13T15:17:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by Silentgoldfish \*
> \*\*I quite liked the original book \*\*M_A_S_H\*\*. Better’n the movie and the tv series anyway. \*\*
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.
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### Author:  [@Kilt-wearin\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kilt-wearin_man)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/18 "2003-01-13T16:46:07Z")
Can’t say I agree with some of the recommendations - despite the fact that I’m far from a “peacenik” \, 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.
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### Author:  [@rampisad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rampisad)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/19 "2003-01-13T17:50:28Z")
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 …
> [@](#):
>
> Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace
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### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2003, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggested-anti-war-novels/148263/20 "2003-01-13T18:14:45Z")
[The Forgotten Soldier](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1574882856/qid=1042481399/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-3653121-7355334?v=glance&s=books) 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.
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