The Forever War

Because titles cannot be copyrighted, you often see books with the same title. For example, the title Book of the Dead has been used by several contemporary authors. The Forever War (2008) by Dexter Filikins, a raw and riveting account of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, shares its title with a science fiction novel written 23 years ago by Joe Haldeman. Both books are about a seemingly endless war. Upon reading reviews of the two books, I found that both are also considered war literature classics.

Dexter Filkins was a correspondent for the Baghdad bureau of The New York Times from 2003 to 2006. Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam veteran who teaches creative writing at MIT.


The Forever War
Dexter Filkins
956.70443 Fi

“Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, brutally intimate, compassionate, often poetic accounts of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, is destined to become a classic.”
-Vanity Fair

“Dexter Filkins is the preeminent war correspondent of my generation, fearless, compassionate, and brutally honest. The Forever War is his astonishing story. It is one of the best books about war that I have ever read. It will stay with me forever.”
-Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide

The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
SCF Hal

"Forever War is brilliant--one of the most influential war novels of our time. That it happens to be set in the future only broadens and enhances its message."
--Greg Bear, author of Moving Mars, Eon, The Forge of God

"To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is, for all its techno-extrapolative brilliance, as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I've read."
--William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Spook Country

For more recommended titles see Good Reads Nonfiction 2008, and Good Reads Recent Science Fiction.