Peace and War: Literature

When Lieutenant Matt Gallagher began his blog with the aim of keeping his family and friends apprised of his experiences, he didn't anticipate that it would resonate far beyond his intended audience. From Publisher

This work is a powerful account of war and homecoming. The author served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. From Publisher

Voices From the Front takes us directly to the often invisible front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan: from first deployment to patrols to combat to field hospitals and, in some cases, homecoming. From Publisher

This is the startlingly honest story of a young man and a war: trapped amid "guerrilla warfare, urban-style" in Mosul, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre, absurd, often frightening world surrounding him. He began writing an online web log describing the war as he experienced it. As the popularity of his "blog" grew, Buzzell became the embedded reporter the army couldn't control. From Publisher

Acclaimed journalist Christian Parenti takes us on a high-speed ride along treacherous roads to the centers of the ongoing conflict in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Sadr City through the first year of the occupation. From Publisher

In this often moving, sometimes wry account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq and in exile in the years following, Iraqi-born, British-educated artist Nuha al-Radi shows us the effects of war on ordinary people. From Publisher

An unprecedented international publishing event: the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee. Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. .. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir--terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. From Publisher

Shocking, inspiring, and finally hopeful, War Child is a memoir by a unique young man, who is determined to tell his story and in so doing bring peace to his homeland. From Publisher

Haunting and lyrical, Waiting for An Ordinary Day tells the long-awaited story of post-occupation Iraq through native eyes. from Publisher

The stories, essays, and poems in this volume portray the effects of war in our time and the shadows they cast, from the Pacific campaigns of World War II to genocide under the Khmer Rouge to hostilities in the MIddle East. soldiers, however, are not in the foreground in most of these works. More often, the writers depict was as a destructive force on the lives of children, women, and other civilians. From Publisher

Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham’s family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War…This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent. From Publisher

Mourning Headband for Hue tells the story of what happened during the fierce North Vietnamese offensive and is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence. From Publisher

It is said that in war heaven and earth change places not once, but many times. This book recounts the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down in Vietnam. From Publisher

In telling his family's story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention--and of the gift of the American immigrants' dream, passed on to their children. From Publisher

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members... From Publisher

This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war... A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation… And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. From Publisher

With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic. From Publisher

Fives and twenty-fives mark the measure of a marine’s life in the road repair platoon. Dispatched to fill potholes on the highways of Iraq, the platoon works to assure safe passage for citizens and military personnel. Their mission lacks the glory of the infantry, but in a war where every pothole contains a hidden bomb, road repair brings its own danger. From Publisher

Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war. From Publisher

Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. From Publisher

Over 9,000 poets have joined this grassroots peace movement by submitting poems and statements to www.poetsagainstthewar.org...Poets Against the War features a selection of the best poems that were submitted to the website. Contributors include: Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Marilyn Hacker, Grace Schulman, Shirley Kaufman, Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hayden Carruth, Jane Hirshfield, Tess Gallagher, Sandra Cisneros, former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and many others. From Publisher

This incredibly ambitious, book-length poem takes on the modern problem of war. The poem's great achievement is that it situates our own age, not as a golden age, but as one notable for its harshness and brutality, especially towards noncombatants... From Publisher

In this cultural history of the First World War, the conflict is seen from the point of view of poets and writers from all over Europe, including Rupert Brooke, Anna Akhmatova, Guillaume Apollinaire, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Rainer Maria Rilke and Siegfried Sassoon. From Publisher

“In later years, when Siegfried Sassoon had written much else in prose and verse, he was annoyed at always being referred to simply as a war poet, but it was the Great War that turned him into a poet of international fame, and I feel sure that his ghost will forgive me for thus bringing together these magnificently scarifying poems.” ―Rupert Hart-Davis, from his Introduction

Written by Mark Twain during the Philippine-American War in the first decade of the twentieth century, The War Prayer tells of a patriotic church service held to send the town's young men off to war…Originally rejected for publication in 1905 as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine," this antiwar parable remained unpublished until 1923. From Publisher - It is now in the Public Domain, so it is free from copyright restrictions. See below for the poem. The book is illustrated.

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. From Publisher

The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective—by an explosive new voice hailed as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive” (The Guardian)—The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before. From Publisher

When her happy life in 1991 Croatia is shattered by civil war, ten-year-old Ana Juric is embroiled in a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers before making a daring escape to America, where years later she struggles to hide her past. From Publisher In Young Adult Fiction

A piercing, unforgettable tale of the horror and spiritual weariness of war, Novel Without a Name will shatter every preconception Americans have about what happened in the jungles of Vietnam. With Duong Thu Huong, …, Vietnam has found a voice both lyrical and stark, powerful enough to capture the conflict that left millions dead and spiritually destroyed her generation ... From Publisher

Djebar’s novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out. From Publisher

Fumiko Hayashi tells the powerful story of tormented love and one woman's struggle to navigate the cruel realities of postwar Japan. From Publisher

The Good Soldier Švejk combines dazzling wordplay and piercing satire to create a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war. From Publisher

This depicts the men of Alpha Company. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. From Publisher Also, check out his memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone(LC# DS559.5 .O27 1999)

Indian Country is a sweeping, brave and compassionate story from one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the Vietnam experience. From Publisher Also, see his novel, DelCorso's gallery (LC# S3553.A625 D4 2001)

Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. From Publisher

"This is a compelling, truth-telling book with a visceral impact, its images stuck in the mind like shards from a pineapple bomb." From Publisher's Weekly

This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome...but so is war. From Publisher

In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. From Publisher Also see the next 2 novels in the Trilogy, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road

Blue Ravens is a story of courage in poverty and war, a human story of art and literature from a recognized master of the postwar American novel and one of the most original and outspoken Native voices writing today. From Publisher

Parade’s End explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of war. From Publisher

A photograph of three young men walking along a road in Germany just before World War I inspires one man to attempt to penetrate the photograph's mystery through research and prompts another man to a personal quest. From Publisher

Records the experiences of a group of bewildered young German soldiers fighting and suffering through the barbaric chaos of those last desperate days of the First World War. From Publisher

Like Catch-22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. From Publisher

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. From Publisher

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. From Publisher

They are the men of C-for-Charlie Company… 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 … they will all discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad, and the living from the dead, in this unforgettable portrait that captures for all time the total experience of men at war. From Publisher

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force. From Publisher