100 books like Going After Cacciato

I have read virtually all of Le Carre’s books because I don’t believe anyone goes so deeply into the psyche of men who enlisted in the fight for perhaps noble reasons but who now continue on almost as automatons. They have not only lost their idealism, their morality and even humanity are either gone or hanging by a thread. It is what I imagine is the furthest edge of what can happen to young soldiers who don’t die—just keep soldiering.

I don’t think anyone has done it better.

Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross has got grit.

This book was recommended to me by my firefighter brother, who often reads what I call “he-man” books. The titles always have words like mutiny, bullets, gangsters, firestorm, etc. So, when he suggested I read this book, I had my reservations. (In fairness, the books he recommends consistently end up on my list of all-time favorites–I guess that’s what I get for pre-judging!) In any case, over the years, I have learned the one thing we both love in a protagonist–and now I have a name for it–is grit. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Ripley is iconic, with multiple film adaptations, including a very good current series on Netflix that takes a few liberties with the original book yet makes it work well.

The book is a perfect example of how a talented writer can create a “slow burn” via a character that grows more compelling, even as their true evil is unmasked.

This book is set during World War II. Captain John Yossarian, bombardier, has a hard time maintaining his sanity, let alone keeping alive. His crazed commander demands that the crew fly ever more dangerous missions. Yossarian realises a terrible truth: “The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.” When men request leave because they are going crazy, the camp doctor explains the catch-22. "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

Yossarian’s predicament was more extreme, his adults more dangerous, but like my other big brothers, he insisted on doing things his way.

As a Vietnam veteran, teacher of war literature, and writer, I am disappointed that I never interviewed Michael Herr. I can only imagine what such an encounter might have been like with this larger-than-life figure, at least the persona (adrenaline junky, reporter on drugs) found in this fragmented collection of war reportage. With its New Journalistic style and content, the sensory-overload writing might be best described as a collection of literary illumination rounds (their underlying message—war is hell and addictive). As a freelance journalist, Herr arrived in Vietnam wanting to reveal the large ugly truths about the war, which he succeeds in doing, but I find the soldiers’ personal war stories more gripping and truthful. For me and even Herr, the real surprise is that this book ultimately chronicles the author’s own war story of innocence lost: the anti-war reporter becomes just as addicted to war as some of his… show more.

I first read this in high school and remember thinking that it was good but not as good as its reputation implied. In retrospect, I think that because I was young and in school, I strongly identified with the main characters, especially Paul, as a thoughtful, introspective, and idealistic young man. What he learns from veterans and then through experience, and what those lessons provoke in him made sense, but at no more on an intellectual level.

Even though I have never served in combat, re-reading it years later, I could now understand how life events, especially such traumatic ones, will cause everlasting changes and damage.  

This is the first Vietnam War book I read. For almost ten years I remained silent about my military service—many coworkers did not know I had served, let alone two tours and wounded in action. Caputo’s voice and sense of loss and waste and rage touched so close to my feelings. His gift of words made me live again the countless hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror—for me, ambushes, mines, incoming artillery, and mortar rounds. Twenty years in the future, when I began writing my stories, I read Caputo’s book again because I hoped to emulate his sense of angst.

This is the improbable story of a true underdog who will stop at nothing to fight fascist evil, even when he has no idea what he’s doing and no one to help him. It’s also a true story. In WWII, Fritz Kolbe was a nondescript German official in the Berlin Foreign Office who made himself into a crucial spy against the Nazis yet for years remained an unknown and unsung hero. Kolbe’s dark drive and passion are fictionalized brilliantly by Andreas Kollender. I was so taken by this tale that I translated it myself from the original German. 

Linda Wolfe is a throwback to the way true crime used to be written and should continue to be written. She was an old-school investigative reporter with an endlessly inquisitive mind and a keen sense of storytelling. Wolfe died just before the Covid pandemic broke, her passing went largely unnoticed. She’s chiefly known for her book about Robert Chambers, Wasted: The Preppie Murder about the 1986 Central Park strangulation murder of Jennifer Levin. The Professor and the Prostitute is a great, lurid title, and this series of essays are fascinating portraits of behavior and psychology. Included is one of her most famous pieces originally penned for New York Magazine, The Strange Death of the Twin Gynecologists about Stewart and Cyril Marcus, made famous in the David Cronenberg film, Dead Ringers.

The Canadian Connection is an expose of the mafia in Canada and its implications for international crime operations. It was first published in French in the mid-1970s and immediately went on to become a national bestseller. There was a time in Quebec when you couldn’t turn the page of a newspaper without seeing an ad with an order form urging you to buy this “Shocking! Chilling!” book that revealed “Names! Dates! Locations!” Jean-Pierre Charbonneau is today considered one of the godfathers of Quebec writings on organized crime. The Canadian Connection is largely forgotten in English-speaking Canada and widely unknown to the rest of the world. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of the mafia, and connections to the New York Five Families of organized crime.