Help me buy books for my dad

Mike Danger

So, my father, who has basically spent his adult life not reading for pleasure, has suddenly started getting into military memoir-type stuff: No Easy Day, Black Hawk Down, etc.

Can anyone recommend some more books in this vein? His tastes run more towards "thrilling adventure" than "deep introspection about war". Also, I think a true story would go over better than a fictional one.

zepherin

The jack reacher book series is good, but they are fiction.

Mulletude

A few easy picks: Band of Brothers, The Bielski Brothers, We Were Soldiers Once...And Young and With the Old Breed

Stephen Ambrose books make for a good easy read but there have been accusations made against him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_E._Ambrose#Criticism

Mayabird

Do you want newer, more recent books or would memoirs by, say, Winston Churchill or earlier be fine as well? There are a lot of war memoirs from many years back that are nonstop tales of their exploits and romps, so long as your dad is willing to branch out beyond recent American literature. Also, just land war or is naval warfare fine too?

Donovan Puppyfucker

Andy McNab writes some enjoyable novels. Bravo Two Zero is a true story about some SAS dudes that got in all kinds of trouble behind enemy lines in the first Gulf War.

MagicToaster

The Forever War is a great war book... it is also sci-fi, which I don't know if he might like.

Mike Danger

Mayabird wrote: »

Do you want newer, more recent books or would memoirs by, say, Winston Churchill or earlier be fine as well? There are a lot of war memoirs from many years back that are nonstop tales of their exploits and romps, so long as your dad is willing to branch out beyond recent American literature. Also, just land war or is naval warfare fine too?

I think at some point I could ease him into those, but right now it's been strictly modern stuff. As far as naval warfare goes, I think that could work.

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Andy McNab writes some enjoyable novels. Bravo Two Zero is a true story about some SAS dudes that got in all kinds of trouble behind enemy lines in the first Gulf War.

Thanks, I'll check this out!

MagicToaster wrote: »

The Forever War is a great war book... it is also sci-fi, which I don't know if he might like.

zepherin wrote: »

The jack reacher book series is good, but they are fiction.

Mulletude wrote: »

A few easy picks: Band of Brothers, The Bielski Brothers, We Were Soldiers Once...And Young and With the Old Breed

Stephen Ambrose books make for a good easy read but there have been accusations made against him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_E._Ambrose#Criticism

Thanks for these, too! They're not really in his wheelhouse at the moment, but I'll make a note of them as his tastes evolve.

dispatch.o

All Quiet on the Western Front was a fantastic movie and an even better book.

Librarian

Espionage/Military is a genre I have read veeeery little, but wouldn't Tom Clancy be what your Dad is looking for? I can't suggest any single book, as I have not read them, but he has written tons.

Rook

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Andy McNab writes some enjoyable novels. Bravo Two Zero is a true story about some SAS dudes that got in all kinds of trouble behind enemy lines in the first Gulf War.

Also about the same mission is the Chris Ryan book The One that Got Away. Partway through their escape the group got split up, McNab going one way, and Ryan going the other, so they make a good reading pair. It should probably be noted though, that both books have lots of enhanced elements to make them more exciting rather than factual reads.

Mulletude

Ahh, more modern

I did read a book a ways back called Boots on the Ground. An easy read about the 82nd Airborne during the invasion of Iraq.

Bobby Derie

Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. "He was a nice boy from a backwood's planet..."

azith28

Just throwing this out there.

My father gave me shit on a regular basis about me reading 'funny books' when i was a kid.

Now whenever he visits me, he attacks my graphic novels.

Find something like Planet Hulk/World War hulk and see if he likes it.

Page-

Catch-22 best WW2 book.

(Maybe Slaughterhouse 5, but that's a little out there.)

Chorazin

Maybe the Axis of Time Trilogy, starting with Weapons of Choice. It's a bit sci-fi at first, but really it's about military culture now vs back in WW2. Basically, a few multi-national near-future warships get sent back in time and help fight in WW2. Neat little series!

November Fifth

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 by William Trotter.

cecily

How about the books of Patrick O'Brian? He wrote nautical historical novels. I know a navy pilot who loves his many books as did my dad, another navy man. Probably the most famous of the series is "Master and Commander". The movie starred Russell Crowe.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey–Maturin_series

Jurg

I'll second The Things They Carried as an amazing book, although, how receptive do you think your father will be to some philosophy? The point of the book is

that there is no objective reality, only subjective interpretations that are equally valid, and to illustrate this point, the same stories are told multiple times, with different variations on the truth, and the narrator explicitly states that whether or not something "actually happened" is of little consequence to its value as a story.

It's still a collection of war stories, but also an exercise.