Military Reads

Redeployment is a 2014 book of short stories written by veteran Phil Klay. Its grim humor and unflinching look at the brutality and horrors of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars won Klay the National Book Award for fiction. The twelve stories in the collection examine themes of maddening bureaucracy, camaraderie among Marines, the cost of civilian casualties to Iraqi society and to the soldiers who inflict them, the difficulty of transitioning back into civilian life... Read Redeployment Summary

Red River is a 2008 novel of historical fiction by Lalita Tademy, largely based on the history of her father’s family. Previously, Lalita Tademy wrote Cane River, which was selected for Oprah’s Book Club and is another historical fiction book, this one based on her maternal relatives. Red River takes place over almost 50 years, following four generations of the Tademy family. The central event in the book is the Colfax Massacre, a true to... Read Red River Summary

Refugee (2017) is a historical, young adult fiction novel by Alan Gratz. It follows the stories of three refugee children in three different geographic locations and points in time. Each child experiences traumatic losses and personal victories as they struggle to escape the political instability of their homelands. Josef Landau is fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. Isabel Fernandez is escaping Castro’s Cuba in 1994. Mahmoud Bishara is leaving Syria during the volatile regime of Bashar... Read Refugee Summary

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Regarding the Pain of Others is a book-length essay by Susan Sontag published in 2003. Sontag initially addresses a question posed to writer and anti-war activist Virginia Woolf: “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?” but then, deducing that war is perennial, Sontag uses the remainder of her book to examine the relation between photography and feelings and ideas about war. She insists on discussing specific wars and specific photographers because each work... Read Regarding the Pain of Others Summary

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Rifleman Dodd, a 1932 historical novel by C.S. Forester, describes the adventures of an English soldier trapped behind enemy lines in 1810 during the Peninsular War, when Britain fights alongside Portugal and Spain against Napoleon’s invading French army. Rifleman Dodd employs guerrilla tactics to harass and kill French troops as he treks across a scorched and starving land to rejoin his regiment. The novel’s descriptions of battle tactics, improvisation under fire, and relentless determination make... Read Rifleman Dodd Summary

Harold Keith published Rifles for Watie in 1957; the book earned a Newbery Medal in 1958. The novel mixes historical fact and fiction, and tells the story of Jefferson Davis Bussey, a 16-year-old Kansas boy who enlists in the Union army in 1861 and serves until the war ends. Jeff begins his service as an infantryman. He falls in love with a Confederate girl and eventually becomes a scout, infiltrating the rebel camp. He joins... Read Rifles for Watie Summary

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Modris Eksteins’s 1989 nonfiction book, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, takes its title from a scandalous 1913 Russian ballet. Critics believed that the ballet’s complex, atonal score, stomping choreography, and the feature of a virginal sacrifice mocked classical ballet conventions. Eksteins—a Canadian historian and author—argues that the juxtaposition of violence and creativity in the ballet echoed in both World War I—“The Great War”—and its aftermath.Eksteins focuses on... Read Rites of Spring Summary

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Ruin and Rising is the third and final book in Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy of young adult fantasy adventure/romance novels. Ruin and Rising was originally published in 2014. Bardugo has written 12 novels as of 2021, many of which are set in the “GrishaVerse” world first portrayed in the novel Shadow and Bone. The Shadow and Bone trilogy, combined with Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology, has been adapted as a television miniseries. Before... Read Ruin and Rising Summary

Ruined, by Lynn Nottage, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, defies easy categorization. To some, the play is an unconventional love story set in a war zone, while to others, it is a melodrama warning society of the irreparable damage war can inflict upon women and men. Either way,Ruined is a play that sends a global political message no one can ignore: rape as a weapon of war is profoundly damaging, and a... Read Ruined Summary

Salt Houses is a 2017 novel by Palestinian-American author Hala Alyan. A multi-generational saga that begins in 1963 and concludes in 2014, the narrative traces the family’s experiences during key events of 20th- and 21st-century Palestinian history. The novel is polyvocal; multiple family members act as narrators. Although the novel provides an in-depth character study of the way that war, displacement, and diaspora impact each family member, it is also a portrait of the Palestinian... Read Salt Houses Summary

Salt to the Sea is a historical young adult novel written by Ruta Sepetys and published in 2016. Sepetys is known for similar young adult historical fiction works, such as I Must Betray You (2022) and Between Shades of Gray (2011). Set during World War II, Salt to the Sea is a coming-of-age story that follows four protagonists as they make and resist the journey to adulthood in a world characterized by war and trauma... Read Salt to the Sea Summary

Sarah’s Key is a novel told from multiple perspectives and points in time. At the outset of the novel, there are two narratives occurring: one in 1942, and the other in 2002. In 1942, Sarah’s family is taken, along with a host of other Jewish families, in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup by the French police. Before they leave their home, Sarah hides her little brother, Michel, in a secret cupboard in the house. She grabs... Read Sarah’s Key Summary

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland interprets the Irish “Troubles” in which clashing state and paramilitary forces in Northern Ireland fought an unofficial ethno-nationalist war. Though the monograph is a work of non-fiction investigative journalism, it unfolds like a murder mystery, focusing on the case of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) abducted and secretly killed in 1972. The... Read Say Nothing Summary