Classics Fiction Historical Fiction Literature Military Fiction War World War II

The World War II Trilogy #2

The Thin Red Line

Name: The Thin Red Line
Rating: 4 (14379 reviews)
Author: James Jones

James Jones January 1, 1962

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Synopsis

“When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. Life was pointless. Whether he looked at a tree or not was pointless. It just didn’t make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless, all along.”

Such is the ultimate significance of war in The Thin Red Line (1962), James Jones’s fictional account of the battle between American and Japanese troops on the island of Guadalcanal. The narrative shifts effortlessly among multiple viewpoints within C-for-Charlie Company, from commanding officer Capt. James Stein, his psychotic first sergeant Eddie Welsh, and the young privates they send into battle. The descriptions of combat conditions—and the mental states it induces—are unflinchingly realistic, including the dialog (in which a certain word Norman Mailer rendered as “fug” 15 years earlier in The Naked and the Dead appears properly spelled on numerous occasions). This is more than a classic of combat fiction; it is one of the most significant explorations of male identity in American literature, establishing Jones as a novelist of the caliber of Herman Melville and Stephen Crane.

Books similar to The Thin Red Line

The Caine Mutiny

★ 4.29

Herman Wouk

The novel that inspired the now-classic film The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

From Here to Eternity

★ 4.08

James Jones

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him.

First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife.

Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood... and, possibly, their death.

In this magnificent but brutal classic of a soldier's life, James Jones portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who live by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair... in the most important American novel to come out of World War II, a masterpiece that captures as no other the honor and savagery of men.

The Naked and the Dead

★ 3.95

Norman Mailer

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.

War and Remembrance

★ 4.43

Herman Wouk

War and Remembrance is a historical romance. The subject is World War II, the viewpoint American. A prologue, The Winds of War, published in 1971, set the historical frame for this work by picturing the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. This is a novel of America at war, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima.

The Winds of War

★ 4.38

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Like no other masterpiece of historical fiction, Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II is the great novel of America's Greatest Generation.

Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events, as well as all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II, as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.

The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance stand as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.

The Good Soldier Švejk

★ 4.1

Jaroslav Hašek

In The Good Soldier Švejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hašek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.

Good-natured and garrulous, Švejk becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.

Cecil Parrott's vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.

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★ 4.21

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This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered - not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives...

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.

Winner of the National Book Award.

Mother Night

★ 4.24

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Librarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

The Thin Red Line

More in The World War II Trilogy Series

From Here to Eternity

Books similar to The Thin Red Line

The Caine Mutiny

From Here to Eternity

The Naked and the Dead

War and Remembrance

The Winds of War

The Good Soldier Švejk

Johnny Got His Gun

Mother Night

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