Update #2

John B recommends:  The War at the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

It is about Brazil’s War of Canudos.

Becky recommends Bedlam South by David Donaldson and Mark Grisham.

It is about the US Civil War.  I couldn’t find an Amazon.com entry for it.  The link is to the website for the book Becky provided.

Update #1 — Recommendations from Luke Baggins -

First — this is what I plan to do with reading recommendations readers offer in the comments section —- I’ll track down the links and other tid bits about the books you mention.

I know a lot of readers here have read a good bit of military-related and war-related fiction — so just drop a note on which ones you really liked - especially any related to Korea —- so others will have an idea what to pick up the next time their looking for something worth reading…..

Onto Baggins’ recommendations:

W.E.B. Griffin’s Corps series:

• The Corps Series (U.S.M.C.)
  • Book I, Semper Fi (1986)
  • Book II, Call to Arms (1987)
  • Book III, Counterattack (1990)
  • Book IV, Battleground (1991)
  • Book V, Line of Fire (1992)
  • Book VI, Close Combat (1993)
  • Book VII, Behind the Lines (1995)
  • Book VIII, In Danger’s Path (1998)
  • Book IX, Under Fire (2002)
  • Book X, Retreat, Hell! (2004)

I [usinkorea] just too a look at Under Fire — it is the first book in this series with a setting in the Korean War. I will probably read it later, but I set it aside, because it was going to be another of those books where the main characters are - well - middle managers with access to top power guys - like President Truman - with the middle managers running around everywhere behind the scenes in the war…….which is a storyline style I’ve gotten a little tired of.

The link above for the Corps series is to a Wikipedia page that gives a broad outline of what each book deals with.

The first three of the Men at War Series:

Book I, The Last Heroes (also published as In The Line of Duty) (1984)

Book II, The Secret Warriors (also published as Covert Operations) (1985)

Book III, The Soldier Spies (also published as Give me Liberty) (1986)

I also recently took at look at the 6th book in this series, published in 2008, The Double Agents, but set it aside for the same reasons as the above. I probably won’t go back to it, because it isn’t set in Korea.

Again, I’m not knocking these books I’ve read by Griffin. He’s sold millions of copies. It just doesn’t fit my desired taste of the moment.

Luke Baggins also recommends a couple of novels by Herman Wouk:

Oh, everyone should read Wouk’s “The Hope” and “The Glory” about Israel up to the 6-day war and the Osirak bombings. These (like WWII / Civil War books), are great therapy for anyone who thinks the present time is scary.

Now, these are two I’ll definately checkout. Wouk is really good, as Baggins notes in the comment, about connecting his excellent fictional characters to real history. He is a master at this. Better than anybody else I’ve ever read (with perhaps one exception - and that is a tie).

And I am curious about this point in world history: the setting up of the nation of Israel.

So, I’ll be getting these two books soon:

The Hope is a historical novel by Herman Wouk about pivotal events in the history of the State of Israel from 1948 to 1967. These include Israel’s War of Independence, the 1956 Sinai War (known in Israel as “Operation Kadesh”), and the Six-Day War. The narrative is continued in the sequel The Glory.

The Glory:

Historical Events in the book include:

• The sinking of the Israeli ship Eilat by Soviet rockets fired by the Egyptian Navy.
• The War of Attrition.
• The Yom Kippur War.
• Operation Entebbe.
• The visit of Anwar Sadat to Israel.

In digging up the links for this update - I noticed that Wouk also wrote the novel The Caine Mutiny from which the excellent movie was made…

Back to Wouk - the other author I’ve read who creates great fictional characters set in real life events - and creates books that are pretty much “history books” with fiction mixed in — is Colleen McCullough.

I’ve only read two of her books - and that was over 10 years ago, but I would recommend them for anyone interested in Roman history and military/war type novels:

The First Man in Rome

The cast includes most of the major historical figures of the late Roman Republic, including: Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, as well as Gaius Julius Caesar (grandfather of Julius Caesar), Julia, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, Publius Rutilius Rufus and Lucius Appuleius Saturninus.

The Grass Crown

the plot of the novel centres on the Social War of 91 to 88 BC, a civil war which Rome fought against its mutinous Italian Allies after they were refused full Roman citizenship.

I thought I’d make this a full post after getting the idea in one of the comment sections.

What are some good war novels and why and what wars?

This could be a running post — I’ll update it by taking useful notes on specific books from the comments section and adding it to the main post.

….So let’s hear what you’ve read and whether they were worth reading or not….

I’ll have to think about the category myself. I hadn’t been reading fiction much until about a year or so ago — being an English Lit. major had broken me from it in about 1995. I focused on non-fiction between then and recent times.

I just finished Griffin’s The Hunters - A Presidential Agent Novel.

It isn’t a “war novel” — in my book - though I guess now you could call it a “war on terror” book. It’s a “CIA” type book with guys running all around the world and with direct lines to the President and speaking 42 different languages each…yada yada yada…

It is worth buying in paperback to read…

Sometimes, I get in the mood for that kind of story. My reading and viewing habits run that way - in moods…

But, right now, I’m in the mood for war novels that focus — on action on the ground — the fighting man level book — but not the common Air Force fighting novel - which seems to dominate the war novel market.

I’m not knocking those. One of the best war novels I can remember off the top of my head was The Warbirds by Richard Herman.

The reviewer of the book panned it somewhat - but it is a quick read that does honor to the word “techno-thriller” — very fast paced once it gets going.

Kalani and Lost Nomad (I think it is) would like it a lot — it is about F-4s and a fictional conflict with Iran written in 1990.

What I want to read right now — are war novels that focus in on the actual fighting men - that do the same with members of the infantry or marines that authors like Herman do with pilots and air crews.

I’d particularly like to read a novel like that set in the Korean War or the current conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The only other books I’ll give a brief note on now are two of my all-time favorites:

The Winds of War

and War and Remembrance

by

Herman Wouk

Both are somewhat long — say, Tom Clancy length — and focus on WWII. They are somewhat in the Tom Clancy and The Hunters mode - in that they focus on high level people traveling the globe - and not focused on gritty, in the trenches unit level war fighting.

The Winds of War, to me, is much better storytelling than the other, but both are good reads — and excellent fictional material on the real events of WWII.

The Winds of War takes you through the run-up to the American involvement in the war by focusing on one military family - telling their individual stories - but mainly how they relate to the father - a naval officer who gets hooked up with President Roosevelt. War and Remembrance follows all the different storylines through to the end of WWII.

They were both later made into separate TV mini-series - which sucked.

Popularity: 3%