Books like Dispatches

01

The Forever War

Dexter Filkins · History

Dexter Filkins spent more than a decade covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the New York Times, and The Forever War is his attempt to render what he witnessed in a form that is closer to literature than journalism.

A kindred memoir read.

02

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien · Memoir

Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

Both dig into vietnam war.

03

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · Biography

Unbroken follows Louis Zamperini from his juvenile delinquency in Depression-era California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he ran the 5,000 meters at nineteen and briefly caught Hitler's attention.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Patrick Radden Keefe · History

Say Nothing opens with a scene that sets its register precisely: Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, is dragged from her Belfast flat by a gang of masked strangers in December 1972 and never seen alive again.

A kindred memoir read.

05

Bubble in the Sun

Christopher Knowlton · History

Bubble in the Sun is Christopher Knowlton's account of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the single most spectacular speculative real estate bubble in American history before the 2000s.

Both dig into american culture.

06

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Both dig into american culture.

07

The Best and the Brightest

David Halberstam · History

David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, published in 1972, is both a history of American intervention in Vietnam and a study of institutional failure.

Both dig into vietnam war.

08

The Pentagon Papers

Neil Sheehan et al. · History

The Pentagon Papers is the popular name for a classified Defense Department study commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967, which documented the history of American involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

Both dig into vietnam war.

09

10% Happier

Dan Harris · Memoir

10% Happier is Dan Harris's account of discovering meditation after a panic attack live on Good Morning America in 2004 forced him to confront an anxiety problem he'd been managing with cocaine and a punishing work schedule.

A kindred memoir read.

10

A Grief Observed

C. S. Lewis · Memoir

A Grief Observed is C.

A kindred memoir read.

11

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

A kindred memoir read.

12

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah · Memoir

Ishmael Beah was twelve years old when the Sierra Leone civil war reached his village and he was separated from his family.

A kindred memoir read.