May 25 is Memorial Day in the US. To honour the sacrifice of those with the courage to have served--and with express gratitude--herewith Military History magazine's list of Best Books on War, in the sincere hope that through study comes understanding.
- THE ILIAD (Homer)
- THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (Thucydides)
- ON WAR (Clausewitz)
- WAR AND PEACE (Tolstoy)
- RED BADGE OF COURAGE (Crane)
- PERSONAL MEMOIRS (Grant)
- FACE OF BATTLE (Keegan)
- WITH THE OLD BREED (Sledge)
- BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM (McPherson)
- WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG (Moore with Galloway)
- ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Remarque)
- FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (Jones)
- CAINE MUTINY (Wouk)
- CIVIL WAR: A NARRATIVE (Foote)
- FORGOTTEN SOLDIER (Sajer)
- ONCE AN EAGLE (Myrer)
- GOODBYE, DARKNESS (Manchester)
- EISENHOWER'S LIEUTENANTS (Weigley)
- WORLD AT ARMS (Weinberg)
- PATTON (D'Este)
As MH chose not to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, I would add Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut), Citizen Soldier (Ambrose), Art ofWar (Sun-Tzu), War and Remembrance (Wouk) and--to round arbitrarily to 25--any history of choice by Walter Lord (my personal military choices would be either Incredible Victory--about the Battle of Midway--or A Time To Stand--about The Alamo; Lord's research may by now be dated but his prose and, especially, sense of the dramatic moment of each chosen story brings history to life).