This is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, including excerpts from such classics as Les Miserables and The Killer Angels. The names of the authors included in this collection of short stories, and many excerpts from memoirs and novels caught my eye, esp when I saw names like Hemingway, William Faulkner and Bert Stiles. It made this look like a good read from the local library. I wasn't disappointed. There are some great stories in here, including what may be my favorite, the tale of Sgt. Alvin York which many people know from the old Gary Cooper film. A few of the pieces I didn't really care for and several suffered by being excerpts - we are dropped into the story without background knowledge of the characters and as a result some of the immediacy gets dulled. I think this collection will be enjoyed by casual readers of military history like myself. Underwood, as editor, provides an introduction to each piece, although a few were a little odd (fanboyish) and/or offputting - the reverse of the intended effect I am sure. I staggered the reading of these stories over a period of time, and I'll confess that my eyes glazed over a time or two in the reading of some of these. So do I think these are the greatest war stories ever told? No, but some are and most are pretty good.

I'm often not crazy about stories that just depict the thick of battle, and the experience of military combat, such as Bruce Catton's excellent accounting of the cornfield at Antietim, a place I have visited and been humbled by. Otherwise I might rate this collection a little higher. I was more taken with things such as the excerpt from Hemingway's "For Whom the Bells Toll", and W. C. Heinz's "The Morning They Shot the Spies", which reflect the "humanity" of people in war, good and bad, and the simple unfairness of it all. Sometimes the humanity and battle do get together in a piece, however, such as the one on the Chosin Few, "Frozen Chosin" by Martin Russ and the Alvin York piece.

The excerpt from "All Quiet on the Western Front" is excellent and clearly shows why it may be the most powerful anti-war war story ever written. So too with the brief but brilliant excerpt from Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels" which is in my reading the best novel on war ever written.

On a side note, there are some unacceptable levels of typographical errors in here, esp with The Stephen Ambrose piece. It is truly ridiculous. It would be impossible to believe that piece was proofread at all. I got so annoyed that I pulled out my own copy of Ambrose's "D-Day" to compare the excerpt to the original and clearly the multiple errors everywhere, such as repeatedly spelling 'toward' as 'twoard' are not in the original work. Someone got extremely sloppy here. I've always thought Stephen Ambrose can be a clunky writer (great historian but his storytelling is very disjointed) but the screwups here are not his fault.

What I get out of stories like these, more than anything, is the never ending insanity of war through the ages.

The stories and excerpts are:

(1) The Cornfield by Bruce Catton, (2) The Morning They Shot the Spies by W.C. Heinz, (3) The Fight at the Bridge by Ernest Hemingway, (4) Frozen Chosin by Martin Russ, (5) Two Soldiers by William Faulkner, (6) The Leipzig Mission by Bert Stiles, (7) Breathing In by Michael Herr, (8) The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon by Col. Theodore Roosevelt, (9) Waterloo by Victor Hugo, (10) Landing Zone X-Ray by Robert Mason, (11) Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell, (12) Omaha Beach by Stephen E. Ambrose, (13) The Drums of the Fore and Aft by Rudyard Kipling, (14) Sink the Bismarck! by C.S. Forester, (15) The Battle at Borodino by Leo Tolstoy, (16) Les Graves Gens (The Brave Men) by William Manchester, (17) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, (18) Pickett's Charge by Michael Shaara, (19) Faith at Sea by Irwin Shaw, (20) Mountain Fighting by Ernie Pyle, (21) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, (22) The Perfect Deadfall by S.L.A. Marshall, (23) Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (24) and Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson. ( )