The Naked and the Dead

The book is about WW2 and the pain and suffering they endure. Read the story. Not for little ones but teenagers that are into starting a career in the Army would be good for them to see what life was like . I think today's world would be a lot easier off.

this is historical fiction of ww 2 , and an amazing read, Mailer takes an immense interest in daily functions of troops , their emotional states and the general bureaucratic mundaneness of the assault on an isolated island in s pacific. He does in depth analysis of many features of us life in the 40s including the status of hispanic , jewish , southern and , bostonian soldiers. He is an intense and insightful writer. Many... Read Full Review

Earlier this year I decided to improve the quality of the books I was reading - or, at least, to mix more "good" books in with the easy reading. The Naked and the Dead was the first of these - and what a good choice it was.Norman Mailer writes with a clarity that is often missing from other good novelists. He develops very strong characters and focusses closely on the interactions between them and their environment. Don't... Read Full Review

This appears to be the theme of Norman Mailer's writings. Time and again we revisit this construct (although the points of view, as in this novel, are wide-ranging and diverse): The Executioner's Song (an individual stand taken for self-interest and justice against the rigid laws and dictates of the prison and legal systems), Harlot's Ghost (which has much in common with The Naked and The Dead, portraying a member of the... Read Full Review

There must have been a glut of war novels published in the wake of World War II, so it's indicative of the high quality of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" that its popularity and acclaim have survived when so many others have been forgotten. What makes it so powerful is its uncompromising depiction of brutal front-line combat in scenes so well written that it's easy to forgive the book for its occasionally banal... Read Full Review