University of Notre Dame

Forum 2022-23

Office of the President

War & Peace

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Suggested Reading List

For those who are interested in reading about themes of War and Peace, here are some suggestions received from faculty.

  1. Pope Francis

    Against War: Building a Culture of Peace

    From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has made concern and action for peace and nonviolence one of his signature themes.

  2. Caesar A. Montevecchio and Gerard F. Powers

    Catholic Peacebuilding and Mining: Integral Peace, Development, and Ecology

    This book explores the role of Catholic peacebuilding in addressing the global mining industry.

  3. Ambrose Bierce

    Chickamauga: A Short Story

    Ambrose Bierce, one of the most popular authors of the late 19th century. He wrote the following story based on his experiences at Chickamauga.

  4. Thomas Pynchon

    Gravity's Rainbow

    Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

  5. Bertolt Brecht

    Mother Courage and Her Children

    Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modem stage, Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht’s most passionate and profound statement against war.

  6. Ernst Jünger

    Storm of Steel

    A memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier.

  7. Hassan Blasim

    The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq

    The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective—by an explosive new voice hailed as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive” (The Guardian)—The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before.

  8. Martha Gellhorn

    The Face of War

    Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was a war correspondent for nearly fifty years. Her candid reports reflected her feelings for people no matter what their political ideologies, and the openness and vulnerability of her conscience.

  9. George Gascoigne

    The Fruites of War

    The soldier poet George Gascoigne (c. 1535-1577) set out from England to Holland in April 1572, came back to England in November 1572, and returned to Holland on 19 March 1573 along with Captain Thomas Morgan’s first military detatchment...

  10. John Horne Burns

    The Gallery

    John Horne Burns brought 'The Gallery' back from World War II, and on publication in 1947 it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller.

  11. Laurence Sterne

    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

    At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's great comic novel contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature... and boasts one of the most innovative and whimsical narrative styles in all literature.

  12. James Jones

    The Thin Red Line

    They are the men of C-for-Charlie company... infantrymen who are about to land, grim and white-faced, on an atoll in the Pacific called Guadalcanal. This is their story, a shatteringly realistic walk into hell and back.

  13. J. Glenn Gray

    The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

    J. Glenn Gray entered the army as a private in May 1941, having been drafted on the same day he was informed of his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University.

  14. Elizabeth D. Samet

    Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness

    In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life.

  15. Roy Scranton

    Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature

    Since World War II, the story of the trauma hero—the noble white man psychologically wounded by his encounter with violence—has become omnipresent in America’s narratives of war, an imaginary solution to the contradictions of American political hegemony.

  16. Roy Scranton

    War Porn

    War porn is, in Roy Scranton’s searing debut novel, a metaphor for the experience of war in the age of the War on Terror, the fracturing and fragmentation of perspective, time, and self that afflicts soldiers and civilians alike...

  17. Eugene Sledge

    With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

    Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater.

  18. Andrew J. Bacevich

    Twilight of the American Century

    Twilight of the American Century is a collection of essays in which Bacevich critically examines the U.S. response to the events of September 2001.