Based on Mailer’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer) own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, The Naked and the Dead is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle.
First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare. It is written in an unsparing journalistic style. A flavour of that particular experience of the Second World War can be found in Terrence Malik’s 1998 film ‘Thin Red Line’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120863/?ref_=sr_1).
All war is horrific but each conflict horrifies in its own particular way.
720 pages in the Harper Perennial Classics paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0007204953
Norman Mailer