Nonfiction:
Anything by John Keegan.
Fiction:
Sorry to sound like a geek, but the short story series The Man/Kzin Wars, even though it’s science fiction, has some excelent war scenarios, both on thr personal down and dirty level, as well as the big. strategic level.
Not surprising as one of the co-authors is Jerry Pournelle.
Shelby Foote’s trilogy The Civil War is well worth your time, as is Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, about the Battle of Gettysburg (already cited above).
Read Bruce Catton…the Army of the Potomac trilogy and anything else you can get. To me, he and Foote are the giants of American Civil War writing, although I admit I still need to read James McPherson before ruling him out. Catton’s works are a bit more like higher-level overviews and mood-pieces than Foote’s slightly more blow-by-blow treatment. I find Foote’s meatier, but he cannot match Catton’s almost poetic vision.
Keegan was cited above – but his first, The Face of Battle, is the key to “getting” Keegan.
I’d also add that Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century expanded my thinking about the ugliness of war, particularly in terms of debunking the myths about nobility and knighthood.
Sailboat
I hope it’s OK to hijack for a plea for help. I read a book about a regiment I think in Italy during a world war who decide to walk away from the battle and travel across Europe on foot…
The end I believe is that you realize it was all a soldier’s fantasy and he is stuck in the battle after all. Much like Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Please help me remember the title.
And yeah, Johnny Got His Gun would be my pick.
If we’re including naval literature, Edward Beach’s Run Silent, Run Deep is the quintessential submarine warfare novel.
[Nitpick]I believe that in Owl Creek Bridge, the soldier’s neck is in the process of snapping – that is, he is dying. I may be wrong, though.
This might be a stretch for some, but On the Beach by Nevil Shute is absolutely chilling in its depiction of the aftermath of nuclear warfare. It should be included in the canon of the Cold War.
Can we include TV? I’d add World at War and Ken Burns’ Civil War series.
I haven’t seen World at War since it originally aired, but I can’t imagine that any other documentary produced since the 70’s has covered it more thoroughly.
Sure, let’s open it up, since we’re at about thirty responses. What are some TV shows and movies?
-MAS*H
-The Longest Day
Actually, I wonder how many canonical books would also qualify in the film category.
Yep, I meant it’s the same in that everything before it was a dream and the last moment shows that the whole narrative was imagined.
I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I figured gigi might yet be waiting for the answer to this: you might be talking about (I’ll spoiler it for the heck of it)
Tim O’Brien’s Going after Cacciato, even though it’s about a company and the Vietnam War
Well if you are going to include Cold War cannon movies, I would submit:
The Day After
Red Dawn
For an advanced tutorial on flying a helicopter during the Vietnam war, see Chickenhawk .
Alistair MacLean’s HMS Ulysses is a truly disturbing account of an ill-fated WWII convoy to Murmansk. It’s very different in tone from his other work.
I loved that book. And it showed other theaters of That War than the trenches of the Western Front. (Along with a bit of The Next War. And the effects of either war on non-combatants.)
Pat Baker’s Regeneration trilogy was an interesting look at the Western Front through British eyes. Wilfred Owen was one of the “real” characters in the novels–so why not include his poetry?
All Quiet on the Western Front , by Erich Maria Remarque (sp?). A deeply moving book.
The movie (orignal 30’s version) is pretty harrowing too; Hitler disliked both so much (mainly the antiwar message) that they were banned in Nazi Germany.
As long as we’re opening up nominations to films, I’ll vote for *Paths of Glory * and Go Tell the Spartans.
IIRC, MacLean served on a very similar ship protecting the northern convoys in WWII .
I’d say that the “essential” Keegan, one one has read his “set-piece” stuff, is his A History of Warfare. Though I’d have edited down his rant on Clausewitz.
Two more for the list:
Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser (the author of the Flashman books). His memories as a 19 year old infantryman fighting the Japanese in Burma. A very close up and personal account of a close up and personal war from brilliant story teller.
Defeat into Victory, by Sir William Slim. The other end of the war in Burma, told by Bill Slim, the General commanding the 14th Army. You would be hard pressed to find a more honest (and well written) memoir from a retired General.