In honor the recent death of Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author David Halberstam, who died on the 23rd of April, I recommend:
The Best and the Brightest: His book about the whiz-kids who surrounded JFK (Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy) and the entry into Viet Nam. A classic. He was also one of the top reporters during the Viet Nam war.
I'm also going out on a limb and recommend some poetry; Barracks Room Ballads: by Rudyard Kipling. Here was someone who through his writing of the common British soldier (Tommy Atkins in that era's parlance) and the conditions he experienced brought about reform and better treatment. Poems like "Tommy" that discuss the publics wartime regard/peacetime disregard for the common soldier:
..."For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees! "
The well known "Gunga-Din", and one of my favorites, "The Young British Soldier", which is from the viewpoint of the seasoned vet speaking to the neophyte and ends with:
"When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!"
