Thursday, February 25, 2016

Ten top books of war reportage

Janine di Giovanni, the Middle East editor of Newsweek and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, has won four major journalistic awards, including the National Magazine Award. Her new book is The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria.

One of di Giovanni's top ten books of war reportage, as shared at the Guardian:
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

This is a novel, but I always shelve it with my reportage books, about a platoon of US soldiers in Vietnam, based on his own experiences in the 23rd Infantry Division. It is devastating, and it was my Vietnam primer, along with Frances “Frankie” Fitzgerald’s The Fire in the Lake.
Read about another book on the list.

The Things They Carried is among The American Scholar editors' eleven best sentences in literature, Simon Mawer's five top war novels, Olen Steinhauer's six favorite books, and is one of Roger “R.J.” Ellory's five favorite human dramas. Melinda L. Pash, author of In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War, says The Things They Carried changed her life.

--Marshal Zeringue