Best War Novels (Fiction & Nonfiction)
Explore the best war novels of all time—gripping fiction & powerful nonfiction. Discover must-read books about battles, heroism, and history's defining conflicts.
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The Unfinished Work
by Frank Meredith
After the Civil War's opening battle in Manassa, VA, young Jake Becker escorted teens Eliza and Kathleen Bigler to stay with their relatives in his hometown of Hanover, PA. Now, two years later, more than 100,000 Confederate troops invade Pennsylvania, intent on winning their second War of Independence. Jake must decide which call to duty he must answer: fight for his belief in Southern freedom and earn Eliza's love, or fight to end slavery - and win the heart of her sister? Incorporating many eye-witness accounts of the battles of Gettysburg, Hanover, and Hunterstown, "The Unfinished Work" features the cavalry duels between Jeb Staurt and George Armstrong Custer, culminating in the last great cavalry battle in world history.
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Code Talker
by Joseph Bruchac
This deeply affecting novel honors all the young men who dared to serve in World War II, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians. "Readers who choose the book for the attraction of Navajo code talking and the heat of battle will come away with more than they ever expected to find."—Booklist, starred review Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. But now Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults "Nonsensational and accurate, Bruchac's tale is quietly inspiring..."—School Library Journal
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When We Were Orphans
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.
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Matterhorn
by Karl Marlantes
Young Marine lieutenant and platoon commander Waino Mellas and his battalion learn about life, loss, and the horrors of war during their thirteen-month tour in the sweltering mountains of South Vietnam.
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Letters from the Front Lines
by Stuart Franklin Platt (Rear Admiral.)
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have served in the Middle East, putting their lives on the line and fighting for not only the future of our nation, but the future of the countries they helped free from tyranny. Regardless of one's political views or otherwise about these wars, Americans overwhelmingly support the men and women serving their country. Many of us, however, are curious about what these soldiers have seen, felt, and done while fighting in the epicenter of fundamental Islamists and terrorists.Letters From The Front Lines is a moving collection of letters, e-mails, and blog entries from those serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was put together by Rear Admiral Stuart F. Platt (retired), who served under President Ronald Reagan as the Navy's first Competition Advocate General.
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Operation Mincemeat
by Ben Macintyre
Chronicles World War II's pivotal deception by two British naval officers who successfully fed false intelligence to the Nazis about where Allied forces were planning an attack in southern Europe.
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The Killer Angels
by Michael Shaara
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “remarkable” (Ken Burns), “utterly absorbing” (Forbes) Civil War classic that inspired the film Gettysburg, with more than three million copies in print—now in a 50th anniversary edition featuring a new introduction by Jeff Shaara “My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—the dramatic story of the battleground for America’s destiny.
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The Untold War
by Nancy Sherman
In a book that draws from interviews with soldiers from all major 20th-and 21st-century conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan, the author illuminates the extent to which wars are fought internally as well as externally, with close-up looks at the psyches of men and women preparing for, experiencing and returning home from war.
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Heaven in the Midst of Hell
War exposes the divide between who we think we are and how we behave in extreme situations. Sheri Snively, who served as a Quaker chaplain with the U.S. Navy, has crafted a vivid, unsettling, and ultimately hopeful personal account of the effects of the Iraq war on soldiers and civilians in Heaven in the Midst of Hell. As she served with the Marines working amid the boredom, ten-sion, and seemingly meaningless carnage at a trauma hospital between Ramadi and Fallujah, Commander Snively experienced first-hand the grim reality of combat. As she recounts the way she and the soldiers around her experience war, she negotiates a compassionate path to healing -- marked not by formulaic answers, but by an open and ques-tioning spirit. Illustrated with the author's own evocative photographs, this is a compelling and unforgettable journey into the human soul.
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Beyond Band of Brothers
by Dick Winters
“Tells the tales left untold by Stephen Ambrose, whose Band of Brothers was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries...laced with Winters’s soldierly exaltations of pride in his comrades’ bravery.”—Publishers Weekly Look for the Band of Brothers miniseries, now available to stream on Netflix! They were called Easy Company—but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered 150% casualties while liberating Europe—an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, Dick Winters was their legendary commander. This is his story—told in his own words for the first time. On D-Day, Winters assumed leadership of the Band of Brothers when its commander was killed and led them through the Battle of the Bulge and into Germany—by which time each member had been wounded. Based on Winters’s wartime diary, Beyond Band of Brothers also includes his comrades’ untold stories. Virtually none of this material appeared in Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers. Neither a protest against nor a glamorization of war, this is a moving memoir by the man who earned the love and respect of the men of Easy Company—and who is a hero to new generations worldwide. Includes photos
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The Occupied Garden
by Kristen den Hartog
The Occupied Garden is the powerful true story of a market gardener and his fiercely devout wife who were living a simple life in Holland when the Nazis invaded in 1940. During the subsequent occupation, Gerrit and Cor den Hartog struggled to keep their young family from starving and from being broken up in an era of intimidation, disappearances, and bombings -- until one devastating day when they found they were unable to protect their children from the war. It wasn’t until long after Gerrit and Cor’s deaths that their granddaughters began to piece their story together; combing through Dutch archives, family lore, and a neighbor’s wartime diary, den Hartog and Kasaboski have lovingly and seamlessly recreated their grandparents’ wartime years. The result is an extraordinary tale of strife and hardship that contains moments of breathtaking courage -- a young mother’s bicycle journey of two hundred miles to find food for her children, a brother and sister’s desperate escape into unoccupied France, a pastor forced into hiding for encouraging acts of resistance -- with a cast of characters that includes the exiled Dutch royal family, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. But it is Gerrit and Cor who take center stage in what is ultimately a deeply moving love story of a man and woman who drew strength from each other throughout those difficult years. Poignant and unforgettable, The Occupied Garden is a testament to the resiliency of ordinary people living in an extraordinary time, written by two sisters determined to keep their family history alive.
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The Coldest War
by James Brady
America's "forgotten war" lasted just thirty-seven months, yet 54,246 Americans died in that time -- nearly as many as died in ten years in Vietnam. On the fiftieth anniversary of this devastating conflict, James Brady tells the story of his life as a young marine lieutenant in Korea. In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't plan to find himself in command of a rifle platoon three years later facing a real enemy, but that is exactly what happened after the Chinese turned a so-called police action into a war. The Coldest War vividly describes Brady's rapid education in the realities of war and the pressures of command. Opportunities for bold offensives sink in the miasma of trench warfare; death comes in fits and starts as too-accurate artillery on both sides seeks out men in their bunkers; constant alertness is crucial for survival, while brutal cold and a seductive silence conspire to lull soldiers into an often fatal stupor. The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet is little known beyond the antics of "M*A*S*H." Here is the inside story that deserves to be told, and James Brady is a powerful witness to a vital chapter of our history.
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A Vietcong Memoir
by Truong Nhu Tang
"An absorbing and moving autobiography...An important addition not only to the literature of Vietnam but to the larger human story of hope, violence and disillusion in the political life of our era."—Chicago Tribune When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho Chi Minh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as one of the major figures in the "fight for liberation"—and one of the most determined adversaries of the United States. He became the Vietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fled the country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exile in Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnam to the West. This is his candid, revealing and unforgettable autobiography.
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In Deadly Combat
by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann
In the hell that was World War II, the Eastern Front was its heart of fire and ice. Gottlob Herbert Bidermann served in that lethal theater from 1941 to 1945, and his memoir of those years recaptures the sights, sounds, and smells of the war as it vividly portrays an army marching on the road to ruin. A riveting and reflective account by one of the millions of anonymous soldiers who fought and died in that cruel terrain, In Deadly Combat conveys the brutality and horrors of the Eastern Front in detail never before available in English. It offers a ground soldier's perspective on life and death on the front lines, providing revealing new information concerning day-to-day operations and German army life. Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. He shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape. He recalls a Christmas gift of gingerbread from home that overcame the stench of battle, an Easter celebrated with a basket of Russian hand grenades for eggs, and his miraculous survival of machine gun fire at close range. In closing he relives the humiliation of surrender to an enemy whom the Germans had once derided and offers a sobering glimpse into life in the Soviet gulags. Bidermann's account debunks the myth of a highly mechanized German army that rolled over weaker opponents with impunity. Despite the vast expanses of territory captured by the Germans during the early months of Operation Barbarossa, the war with Russia remained tenuous and unforgiving. His story commits that living hell to the annals of World War II and broadens our understanding of its most deadly combat zone. Translator Derek Zumbro has rendered Bidermann's memoir into a compelling narrative that retains the author's powerful style. This English-language edition of Bidermann's dynamic story is based upon a privately published memoir entitled Krim-Kurland Mit Der 132 Infanterie Division.The translator has added important events derived from numerous interviews with Bidermann to provide additional context for American readers.
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Black Edelweiss
by Johann Voss
When a 20-year old Waffen-SS veteran of two years' combat against the Soviets and Americans is confronted with the awful, undeniable truth of the Holocaust, he must reconcile it with his pride in his comrades' battlefield sacrifices. The author served in SS Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 Reinhard Heydrich, part of 6th SS Mountain Division Nord. The book is mostly an account of his extensive combat service against the Soviets in northern Karelia and Finland, with a shorter section describing combat against the Americans in the Vosges and in the Saar-Moselle triangle. Voss reflects on the totality of his wartime experiences, from the origins of his reasons for enlisting in the Waffen-SS to his experiences in US captivity. The result is a compelling and honest account.
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Dreams in a Time of War
by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo
Recounts the story of the author's childhood, covering his early years in World War II-era Kenya as the fifth child of a third wife, his thirst for learning that singled him out, and the political struggles that shaped his life.
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Once a Marine
by Nick Popaditch
Known as "The cigar marine" from an AP photograph taken April 9, 2003, this is the story of Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch from his tours in Iraq, to his injuries which left him legally blind and partially deaf, and to his struggle to remain a true marine.
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Civil War
The landscape of the Marvel Universe is changing, and it's time to choose: Whose side are you on? A conflict has been brewing from more than a year, threatening to pit friend against friend, brother against brother - and all it will take is a single misstep to cost thousands their lives and ignite the fuse! As the war claims its first victims, no one is safe as teams, friendships and families begin to fall apart. The crossover that rewrites the rules, Civil War stars Spider-Man, the New Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the entirety of the Marvel pantheon! Collects Civil War #1-7 and Marvel Spotlight: Civil War.
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Lee
by Douglas Southall Freeman
Douglas Southall Freeman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Robert E. Lee was greeted with critical acclaim when it was first published in 1935. This reissue chronicles all the major aspects and highlights of the general’s military career, from his stunning accomplishments in the Mexican War to the humbling surrender at Appomattox. More than just a military leader, Lee embodied all the conflicts of his time. The son of a Revolutionary War hero and related by marriage to George Washington, he was the product of young America’s elite. When Abraham Lincoln offered him command of the United States Army, however, he choose to lead the confederate ranks, convinced that his first loyalty lay with his native Virginia. Although a member of the planter class, he felt that slavery was “a moral and political evil.” Aloof and somber, he nevertheless continually inspired his men by his deep concern for their personal welfare. Freeman’s biography is the full portrait of a great American—a distinguished, scholarly, yet eminently readable classic that has linked Freeman to Lee as irrevocably as Boswell to Dr. Johnson.
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The Luck of the Draw
by C. Kenneth Ruiz
The author recalls his wartime experiences first aboard the cruiser USS Vincennes, which was attacked and sunk by a surprise Japanese attack, and later on the submarine USS Pollack.
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Palace Cobra
by Ed Rasimus
Picking up where the acclaimed "When Thunder Rolled" leaves off, the author pens a riveting memoir of his service as an experienced combat pilot in the waning days of the Vietnam War. photos. Martins Press.