What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCatch-22
Joseph Heller · 463 pages
*Catch-22* is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, *Catch-22* is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousan
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer · 721 pages
Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, *The Naked and the Dead* is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare. Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man platoon
The Thin Red Line
James Jones · 477 pages
They are the men of C-for-Charlie Company--"Mad" 1stSgt. Eddie Welsh, SSgt. Don Doll, Pvt. John Bell, Capt. James Stein, Cpl. Fife, and dozens more just like them--infantrymen in "this man's army" who are about to land grim and white-faced on an atoll in the Pacific called Guadalcanal. This is their story, a shatteringly realistic walk into hell and back. In the days ahead some will earn medals; o
Her Privates We
Frederic Manning · 288 pages
Originally published in a censored version, thanks to the realistic level of swearing in the soldiers' dialogue, 'Her Privates We' offers a unique insight into the life of a British infantryman in the trenches in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Somme. The author was an educated misfit who served alongside ordinary working class men; this gave him both the ability and the motivation to
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 332 pages
A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations. The publication of A Farewell to Arms cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first best-seller, and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as "the premier
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 186 pages
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Saving Private Ryan
Max Allan Collins · 107 pages
Corelli's Mandolin
Louis de Bernieres · 437 pages
The Greek island of Cephallonia - peaceful, remote, famed for its beauty, its light, its mythic history - and only just beginning to enter the twentieth century when the tide of World War II rolls onto its shores. This is the setting for Louis de Bernieres's lyrical, heartbreaking, and hilarious chronicle of the days and nights of the island's inhabitants over fifty tumultuous years. "It was an i
Fires on the Plain
Shohei Ooka · 248 pages
"This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. The book is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this larger disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society, one by
Bomber
Len Deighton · 493 pages
The classic novel of the Second World War that relates in devastating detail the 24-hour story of an allied bombing raid.Bomber is a novel war. There are no victors, no vanquished. There are simply those who remain alive, and those who die.Bomber follows the progress of an Allied air raid through a period of twenty-four hours in the summer of 1943. It portrays all the participants in a terrifying
The Young Lions
Irwin Shaw · 677 pages
The Young Lions is a vivid and classic novel that portrays the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting World War II. Told from the points of view of a perceptive young Nazi, a jaded American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy just married to the love of his life, Shaw conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war.
Battle Cry
Leon Uris · 480 pages
Battle Cry is the riveting Marine epic by the bestselling author of such classics as Trinity and Exodus.Originally published in 1953, Leon Uris's Battle Cry is the raw and exciting story of men at war from a legendary American author.This is the story of enlisted men – Marines – at the beginning of World War II. They are a rough–and–ready tangle of guys from America's cities and farms and reservat
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Stephen E. Ambrose · 336 pages
Follows the 101st Airbone as it drops into Normandy on D-Day and fights its way through Europe to the end of World War II.
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien · 256 pages
*The Things They Carried* (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division.
The Moon Is Down
John Steinbeck · 130 pages
Also contained in: - [The Grapes of Wrath / The Moon is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and Men](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23165W/The_Grapes_of_Wrath_The_Moon_is_Down_Cannery_Row_East_of_Eden_Of_Mice_and_Men)
Company K
William March · 183 pages
Stemming directly from the author's experiences with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, the book consists of 113 sketches, or chapters, tracing the fictional Company K's war exploits and providing an emotional history of the men of the company that extends beyond the boundaries of the war itself.