100 books like On Killing

David Halberstam documents how fools go to war. This book is about the whiz kids that got us into the Vietnam war and ran it under the JFK and the Johnson administrations. The same ones who got us into the Iraq War, the Spanish American War, and so on. There is a quote that I love from this book that effectively says, "they used brilliant policies that defied common sense." And, that sums this all up. These whiz kids ran a war as if it was part of American politics and from thousands of miles away with memos and meetings in DC. They completely screwed it up.

David Halberstam was a correspondent in Saigon and knew these insiders. He wrote about the decision-making that was happening behind closed doors that led to one of our greatest follies. He is a master storyteller and I strongly recommend this book. 

Singlehandedly one of the greatest fictional books about war, Tim finds clever ways of imbuing readers with captivating characters.

Each short story gives insight into a war still misunderstood to this day.

As a veteran, I identify with the curious war stories and the unique character attributes displayed throughout them.

While cynical and the fictitious content questioned, The Things They Carried carries the weight of war and its lasting effects. 

When I say Slaughterhouse-Five is funny, people eye me like I’m a monster. But it is. The New York Times even has my back on this.

Is the novel also gut-wrenchingly tragic and horrifying? Of course. It’s one of the most potent stories ever written, and I’m not sure I’ve encountered anything whose biting satire eviscerates the absurdity of war (and of existence) so well.

Vonnegut balances humor and grief on the head of a pin: “Billy turned on the Magic Fingers, and he was jiggled as he wept.” 

This is the best book on the Pacific campaign in World War 2. Tarawa was a small island the USA wanted to build a landing strip on and the Japanese put 5,000 soldiers in elaborate well built bunkers to defend it. Robert was a war correspondent who was on the beach for the invasion. You are right there with him as he is huddled in fear behind a burned-out tank during the landing. You can feel the bullets pinging near your head and see the dead all around you.

It was a massacre. It started with a rare low tide that prevented the landing craft from reaching the beach. The American troops had to wade through the water while Japanese machine guns raked them. The water turned red with American blood. Robert was there for everything and wrote it all. Even the aftermath as he surveyed the scene with the… show more.

This book is about the art of war, the artistry of war, and the thinking behind war. In The Best And The Brightest David Halberstam documents how the people running the Vietnam War had no grasp of what war was. And, they were going up against Ho Chi Minh who translated this book from Chinese to Vietnamese and ingrained the concepts into his soldiers. 

The Americans had all the technology and industry that was possible during this era. They had machine guns, bombs, aircraft, and helicopters. They were building ports, warehouses, flying over ping pong tables, ice-cold Coca Cola machines, whatever they wanted. And, nobody was thinking about war. They were thinking logically and that all these mechanical things were going to win the war. On the other side, the Vietnamese had this book. They studied this book and they lived this book. I was interviewing a 67-year-old member of… show more.

This memoir captures the journey of child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone, and shows how once-innocent children with ordinary lives became killing machines in the hands of a ruthless rebel leader. Beah doesn't shy away from the gruesomeness of civil war, but there is beauty in how he weaves this memoir that reads like a novel. Though I am not usually a fan of books with a lot of violence, I was drawn to this one and could not put it down. I believe history is best learned from those who have first-hand experience. This is a one-of-a-kind book and to Beah’s credit, well-written as well. 

Junger wrote War, about Afghanistan. But as I found the West Point rugby players’ stories wouldn’t leave me alone, so Junger stayed with those he found in Kunar province.

In Tribe, he considers the ties that bind – notably a focus on the “energy of male conflict and male closeness”. Junger “once asked a combat vet if he’d rather have an enemy or another close friend”. The vet looked at Junger like he was crazy. “‘Oh, an enemy, 100%,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got a lot of friends.’

He thought about it a little longer. ‘Anyway, all my best friends I’ve gotten into fights with – knock-down, drag-out fights. Granted we were always drunk, but think about that.’ He shook his head as if even he couldn’t believe it.”

I read this book many years ago and it was a time when I dreamed of being a war correspondent. It made me realise that I wasn’t cut out for it. Loyd’s unflinching account of the Bosnian War in the 1990s was so vivid that it made me physically recoil. I’d have become traumatised if I had seen the things he saw. I admired his powers of description and raw honesty. He is also addicted to smack, which takes him to dark places.

I wanted to understand why individuals in our society would volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way by joining—and sometimes reenlisting—to serve on the front lines in a far-flung region of little strategic value to our country (Afghanistan).

In this book, a couple of common themes popped up: camaraderie and heightened states of awareness. The bonds these young men cement when depending upon each other for life and limb take on meaning greater than life itself.

And the strange sense of control—and lack of fear—that can occur on the battlefield when adrenaline kicks in and everything slows down in the mind’s eye has parallels to situations that us outdoor adventure enthusiasts also crave—the “flow experience”—but at a level of intensity I can only imagine.

As a young psychologist during the Vietnam War, Edward Tick served his country not by enlisting himself but through tireless efforts to help those who returned from war traumatized. This was the first book that helped me understand that posttraumatic stress is not just some “disorder” that I’d suffer from forever. Rather, it is simply the human mind’s normal—probably unavoidable—response to combat, and, Tick argues, there is also such a thing as posttraumatic growth. He examines how ancient and modern societies train their warrior classes, noting that the ritualistic civilian-to-soldier process (we’d call it “boot camp” or “basic training”) often lacks a necessary counterpart today: that is, a formal soldier-to-civilian process, and this only compounds the issues of PTSD and the American military-civilian divide.