War fiction: books tagged “war fiction” @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780449213940 (0-449-21394-3, 0449213943)

by Erich Maria Remarque

ISBN 0449213943 (0-449-21394-3)
Softcover, Fawcett Books

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Book summary:

Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarques masterpiece of the German experience during World War I.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . .

This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches.

Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.

The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.The New York Times Book Review [via]

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ISBN 9780684833392 (0-684-83339-5, 0684833395)

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Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

ISBN 0684833395 (0-684-83339-5)
Softcover, Scribner

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Book summary:

There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.

Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. [via]

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ISBN 9780764586712 (0-7645-8671-8, 0764586718)

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Cliffsnotes All Quiet on the Western Front

by Susan Van Kirk

ISBN 0764586718 (0-7645-8671-8)
Softcover, Cliff Notes

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Book summary:

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format.

In CliffsNotes on All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque takes you inside the gruesome realities of World War I through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a sensitive teenager and typical infantryman in the German army.

This study guide will help you begin to consider how Remarque's views on war might relate to modern-day conflicts. You'll also gain insight into the life and cultural background of the author. Other features that help you study include

Character analyses of major players
A character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the characters
Critical essays
A review section that tests your knowledge
A Resource Center full of books, articles, films, and Internet sites

Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

[via]

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Cliffsnotes All Quiet on the Western Front: ISBN 0764586718 (0-7645-8671-8)
Softcover, Cliff Notes

ISBN 9781555460440 (1-55546-044-5, 1555460445)

Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

ISBN 1555460445 (1-55546-044-5)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:

A guide to reading "A Farewell to Arms" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. [via]

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A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

ISBN 1556512759 (1-55651-275-9)
Hardcover, Cram Cassettes

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Book summary:

As a youth of 18, Ernest Hemingway was eager to fight in the Great War. Poor vision kept him out of the army, so he joined the ambulance corps instead and was sent to France. Then he transferred to Italy where he became the first American wounded in that country during World War I. Hemingway came out of the European battlefields with a medal for valor and a wealth of experience that he would, 10 years later, spin into literary gold with A Farewell to Arms. This is the story of Lieutenant Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy, and almost immediately Hemingway sets up the central tension of the novel: the tenuous nature of love in a time of war. During their first encounter, Catherine tells Henry about her fiancé of eight years who had been killed the year before in the Somme. Explaining why she hadn't married him, she says she was afraid marriage would be bad for him, then admits:

I wanted to do something for him. You see, I didn't care about the other thing and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know.

The two begin an affair, with Henry quite convinced that he "did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards." Soon enough, however, the game turns serious for both of them and ultimately Henry ends up deserting to be with Catherine.

Hemingway was not known for either unbridled optimism or happy endings, and A Farewell to Arms, like his other novels (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and To Have and Have Not), offers neither. What it does provide is an unblinking portrayal of men and women behaving with grace under pressure, both physical and psychological, and somehow finding the courage to go on in the face of certain loss. --Alix Wilber [via]

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ISBN 9783462027211 (3-462-02721-2, 3462027212)

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Im Westen Nichts Neues

by Erich Maria Remarque

ISBN 3462027212 (3-462-02721-2)
Softcover, Schoenhofs Foreign Books

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Book summary:

Will man den Wehrdienst verweigern und Zivildienst ableisten, dann sollte man in der Gewissensprüfung darlegen können, warum man sich denn keinen Dienst an der Waffe vorstellen kann. Und mehr als einmal dürfte dann als Begründung die Lektüre von Erich Maria Remarques Im Westen nicht Neues folgen.

Dieser Roman schildert aufs Eindringlichste die schauerlichen Erlebnisse des Soldaten Paul Bäumer an der Westfront des Ersten Weltkrieges, wo sich Deutsche und Alliierte in einem grausamen Grabenkrieg gegenüberstanden. Aber eigentlich sind Schauplatz und Zeit bedeutungslos, beherrschend ist das sinnlose Töten und die zu reinem Menschenmaterial degradierten Soldaten, die schon lange den Glauben an den "gerechten Krieg" aufgegeben haben. Hier ist kein Platz für klischeehaft mutige Helden, Verlierer sind sie letztlich alle, die da im Schlamm der Schützengräben liegen.

So mancher Leser wird nach diesem Roman seine Meinung zu Krieg und Militärdienst geändert haben. Wer heute noch glaubt, Krieg könne eine heldenhafte Sache sein, der kennt das Buch wahrscheinlich nicht und sollte einmal einen Blick hinein werfen. Danach ist er entweder eines besseren belehrt oder scheinbar schon völlig abgestumpft. --Joachim Hohwieler [via]

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Im Westen Nichts Neues: ISBN 3462027212 (3-462-02721-2)
Softcover, Schoenhofs Foreign Books

ISBN 9780679600282 (0-679-60028-0, 0679600280)

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In Search of Lost Time

by Marcel Proust

ISBN 0679600280 (0-679-60028-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:

The Guermantes Way, in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantess château near Combray. It also represents the narrators passage into the rarefied social kaleidoscope of the Guermantess Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantess drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]

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In Search of Lost Time: ISBN 0679600280 (0-679-60028-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

ISBN 9780791059258 (0-7910-5925-1, 0791059251)

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791059251 (0-7910-5925-1)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: ISBN 0791059251 (0-7910-5925-1)
Hardcover, Facts on File

ISBN 9781416500254 (1-4165-0025-1, 1416500251)

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The Red Badge of Courage

by Stephen Crane, Cynthia Brantley Johnson, Alyssa Harad

ISBN 1416500251 (1-4165-0025-1)
Softcover, Pocket Classics

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Book summary:

With an Introduction by Richard Jenseth, St Lawrence University The Red Badge of Courage is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It reports on the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier. It evokes the chaos and the dull clatter of war: the acrid smoke, the incessant rumours of coming battles, the filth and cold, the numbing monotony, the unworldly wailing of the dying. Like an impressionist painter, Crane also captures the strange beauty of war: the brilliant red flags against a blue sky, steel bayonets flashing in the morning sun as soldiers step off into battle. In the midst of this chaotic outer world, he creates an intricate inner world as he takes us inside the head of Henry Fleming. [via]

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The Red Badge of Courage

by Sculley Bradley, Stephen Crane, E. Hudson Long, Donald Pizer, Richmond Croom Beatty

ISBN 0393044351 (0-393-04435-1)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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Book summary:

Stephen Crane's classic work [via]

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ISBN 9781402726637 (1-4027-2663-5, 1402726635)

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The Red Badge of Courage

by Oliver Ho, Jamel Akib

ISBN 1402726635 (1-4027-2663-5)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:

A searing tale of fear and courage, set during the Civil War, but more powerful today than ever. A young man enlists in the Union Army, but nervously wonders how he will react to the blood, violence, and death of a real battle. When that terrible day arrives, he flees the fighting in terror. But his cowardly behavior gnaws at his conscience, and he searches for redemption for what he has done.

[via]

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The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 1402726635 (1-4027-2663-5)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

ISBN 9780451515926 (0-451-51592-7, 0451515927)

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The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Stories

by Stephen Crane, R. W. Stallman

ISBN 0451515927 (0-451-51592-7)
Softcover, New Amer Library

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Book summary:

Stephen Crane's classic work [via]

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The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Stories: ISBN 0451515927 (0-451-51592-7)
Softcover, New Amer Library

ISBN 9780385333849 (0-385-33384-6, 0385333846)

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Slaughter House Five

by Kurt Vonnegut

ISBN 0385333846 (0-385-33384-6)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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Book summary:

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. 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. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor. [via]

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Stephen Cranes the Red Badge of Courage

by Stephen Crane

ISBN 0671006606 (0-671-00660-6)
Softcover, Monarch Notes

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Stephen Cranes the Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0671006606 (0-671-00660-6)
Softcover, Monarch Notes

ISBN 9781586638276 (1-58663-827-0, 1586638270)

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The Things They Carried

by Tim O'Brien, SparkNotes Staff

ISBN 1586638270 (1-58663-827-0)
Softcover, Spark Publishing Group

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"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber [via]

More editions of The Things They Carried:

ISBN 9780791081716 (0-7910-8171-0, 0791081710)

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Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791081710 (0-7910-8171-0)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber [via]

More editions of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried:

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried: ISBN 0791081710 (0-7910-8171-0)
Hardcover, Facts on File

ISBN 9780451522702 (0-451-52270-2, 0451522702)

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The Vaudevilles

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Ann Dunnigan

ISBN 0451522702 (0-451-52270-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Newly repackaged, here are the five masterpieces by one of the world's greatest playwrights, in translation by Ann Dunnigan. As Robert Brustein declares in the foreword to this edition: "in the modern theater...there are none who bring the drama to a higher realization of its human role." [via]

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The Vaudevilles: ISBN 0451522702 (0-451-52270-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780864735041 (0-86473-504-9, 0864735049)

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Vibrant With Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell

by Peter Whiteford, Ursula Bethell

ISBN 0864735049 (0-86473-504-9)
Softcover, Victoria Univ Pr

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Book summary:

Ursula Bethell was a modernist poet who helped shape New Zealand's literary scene between the two world wars. This collection of letters tells the story of her early life of travel and social work in Europe and opens a window on her subsequent writerly life as she describes the origins of many of her poems.

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