List of books with anti-war themes

Books with anti-war themes have explicit anti-war messages or have been described as having significant anti-war themes or sentiments. Not all of these books have a direct connection to any particular anti-war movement. The list includes fiction and non-fiction, and books for children and younger readers.

Fiction

• A Fable – William Faulkner, 1954, World War One
• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
• The Americanization of Emily – William Bradford Huie
• Bid Me To Live – H.D. novel, 1960^[1]
• Captain Jinks, Hero – Ernest Crosby, 1902^[2]
• Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
• Cat's Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut science fiction novel
• Celestial Matters – Richard Garfinkle science fiction novel
• Company K – William March novel
• Dead Yesterday – Mary Agnes Hamilton novel, 1916^[3]
• Despised and Rejected – Rose Allatini novel, (published under the name A. T. Fitzroy) 1918 ^[4][5]
• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
• The Forever War – Joe Haldeman science fiction novel
• From Here to Eternity – James Jones novel
• Generals Die in Bed – Charles Yale Harrison novel
• The Good Soldier Svejk – Jaroslav Hašek novel
• Involution & Evolution – Joss Sheldon novel
• Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo novel, 1938
• Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline novel
• Lay Down Your Arms! – Bertha von Suttner novel
• Lysistrata – Aristophanes play, 411 BCE
• The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer novel
• Non-Combatants and Others – Rose Macaulay novel, 1916^[3]
• Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War – Evadne Price (as Helen Zenna Smith]] novel, 1930
• On the Beach – Nevil Shute novel
• The Once and Future King by T. H. White, 1958^[6]
• Regeneration by Pat Barker
• The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane novel, 1895
• Shabdangal – Malayalam novel, 1947
• The Short-Timers – Gustav Hasford novel
• Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut science fiction novel
• The Thin Red Line – James Jones novel
• The Things They Carried – Tim O'Brien, 1990
• The Tin Drum – Günter Grass novel
• The Train Was on Time (Der Zug war pünktlich) – novel by Heinrich Böll, 1949
• The War Prayer – Mark Twain short story, c.1910
• The Wars – Timothy Findley novel, 1977^[7]
• Two Women – Alberto Moravia novel, 1958
• Three Soldiers – John Dos Passos novel, 1921, World War One
• Under Fire – Henri Barbusse novel, 1916^[8]
• Voyage to Faremido – Frigyes Karinthy novel, 1916^[9]
• War with the Newts – Karel Čapek, novel 1936^[10]
• We That Were Young – Irene Rathbone (1892–1980) novel, 1932^[11]
• Why Are We in Vietnam? Norman Mailer novel, 1967
• Why Was I Killed? (retitled Return of the Traveller in the US) – Rex Warner Novel 1943^[12]

Non-fiction

• Addicted to War - Joel Andreas, 1991, 2002
• An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era – Charles DeBenedetti, 1990
• The Armies of the Night – non-fiction novel by Norman Mailer 1968.
• Autobiography:The Story of my Experiments with Truth – Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1927^[13]
• The Bloody Traffic – Fenner Brockway, 1934.^[14]
• Born on the Fourth of July – Ron Kovic autobiography, 1976
• The Causes of World War Three – C. Wright Mills, 1958^[15]
• Choosing Peace: A Handbook on War, Peace, and Your Conscience – Robert A. Seeley, 1994
• The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War – Paul R. Ehrlich, Carl Sagan and Donald Kennedy 1984.
• Collateral Damage : America's War Against Iraqi Civilians – Chris Hedges, 2008.
• The Complaint of Peace – Desiderius Erasmus, 1517.^[16]
• The Conduct of the Allies - Jonathan Swift 1711
• The Conquest of Violence – Bart de Ligt, 1937.^[17]
• Cry Havoc! – Beverley Nichols, 1933.^[14]
• Disenchantment - C. E. Montague, 1922.^[18]
• The Education of a Christian Prince – Desiderius Erasmus, 1516.^[16]
• Einstein on Peace – Edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden. Preface by Bertrand Russell, 1960.^[14]
• Ends and Means – Aldous Huxley essays, 1937.^[14]
• Fate of the Earth – Jonathan Schell, 1982
• The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now – Jonathan Schell, 1998
• Hiroshima – John Hersey account of the bombings, 1946.
• Human Smoke – Nicholson Baker.^[19]
• If the War Goes On … – Hermann Hesse, 1971^[20]
• In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter – Gordon C. Zahn, 1981.^[13]
• The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War – Frederick Downs, 1978
• The Kingdom of God is Within You – Leo Tolstoy, 1894
• Krieg dem Kriege - Ernst Friedrich, 1924
• The Long Road to Greenham : Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 – Jill Liddington, 1989.
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago – non-fiction novel by Norman Mailer, 1968.
• New Cyneas – Émeric Crucé, 1623.
• Newer Ideals of Peace – Jane Addams, 1907^[21]
• Nonviolence: The history of a dangerous idea – Mark Kurlansky, 2006.
• No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran – Murray Polner, 1971
• Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe – Graham Allison, 2004
• Nuclear Weapons: The Road to Zero – 1998 book edited by Joseph Rotblat.
• Pacifism in the United States Peter Brock, 1968.^[14]
• Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (1972), Peter Brock.^[14]
• Pacifism in the Twentieth Century – Peter Brock and Nigel Young, 1999.
• Peace Is Possible: Conversations with Arab and Israeli Leaders from 1988 to the Present – S. Daniel Abraham, Bill Clinton, 2006.
• Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated – James Mann, editor, 2004
• Peace with Honour – A. A. Milne, 1934.^[14]
• The Politics of Jesus – John Howard Yoder, 1972
• Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch – Immanuel Kant 1795 essay
• A People's History of the United States – Howard Zinn, 1980.
• The Power of Non-Violence – Richard B. Gregg, 1934.^[14]
• The Root Is Man: Two Essays in Politics – Dwight Macdonald, 1953^[22]
• Scapegoats of the Empire – Lt. George Witton memoir, 1907
• Science, Liberty and Peace – Aldous Huxley, 1946.
• The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger – Jonathan Schell, 2007.
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 1 - One World or None : a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement through 1953, Lawrence S. Wittner, 1993.^[23]
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 2 - Resisting the Bomb : a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, 1954-1970, Lawrence S Wittner, 1997.^[23]
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 3 - Toward Nuclear Abolition : a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, 1971 to the present,Lawrence S. Wittner, 2003.^[23]
• Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, 1933.^[24]
• The Third Morality – Gerald Heard, 1937.^[14]
• Three Guineas – Virginia Woolf, 1938.^[25]
• The Trumpet of Conscience AKA Conscience for Change – Martin Luther King, 1968^[13]
• Voices Against War: A Century of Protest – Lyn Smith, 2009.^[26]
• War Against War by Ernst Friedrich (1894–1967), 1924^[27][28]
• War and Democracy – Paul Gottfried, 2012
• War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning – Chris Hedges, 2003
• War Is a Lie David Swanson 2010
• War Is a Racket – former U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler speech, 1933 and pamphlet, 1935
• We Will Not Cease – Archibald Baxter memoir, 1939.
• Which Way to Peace? – Bertrand Russell, 1936.^[14]
• White Flash, Black Rain: Women of Japan Relive the Bomb – L. Vance-Watkins and A. Mariko, eds., 1995
• Why Didn't You Have To Go To Vietnam, Daddy? – (Steve Wilken) Starving Writers Publishing 2009
• Why Men Fight – Bertrand Russell, 1916.^[14]
• "Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace" - Judith Hand, 2003
• Worthy of Gratitude? Why Veterans May Not Want to be Thanked for Their Service in War -- Camillo Mac Bica, Gnosis Press, 2015
• Writings Against Power and Death – Alex Comfort, 1994.

Anthologies of Anti-War Writing

• Instead of Violence: Writings by the Great Advocates of Peace and Nonviolence throughout History – edited by Arthur Weinberg and Lila Shaffer Weinberg, 1963.^[13][29]
• The Pacifist Conscience – edited by Peter Mayer, 1966.^[13]
• Peace is the Way : writings on nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation - edited by Walter Wink ^[30]
• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now – Murray Polner, Thomas Woods, 2008.

Juvenile fiction

• Children of the Book – Peter Carter, 1982^[31]
• The Clay Marble – Minfong Ho novel, 1991
• Ender's Game – Orson Scott Card novel, 1985
• Fallen Angels – Walter Dean Myers novel, 1988
• Habibi – Naomi Shihab Nye novel, 1997
• I Had Seen Castles – Cynthia Rylant, 1993
• Soldier's Heart: A Novel of the Civil War – Gary Paulsen novel, 1998
• The Butter Battle Book – Dr. Seuss, 1984
• Sunrise over Fallujah – Walter Dean Myers, 2008
• War Horse – Michael Morpurgo, 1982
• When the Horses Ride By: Children in the Times of War – Greenfield, Gilchrist poems and illus., 2006

Juvenile non-fiction

• Ain't Gonna Study War No More: The Story of America's Peace Seekers – Milton Meltzer, 2002
• Lines in the Sand: New Writing on War and Peace – Hoffman and Lassister, eds. essays, stories, poems, 2003
• Operation Warhawks: How Young People Become Warriors – Terrence Webster-Doyle, 1993
• Some Reasons for War: How Families, Myths and Warfare Are Connected – Sue Mansfield, 1988
• A Little Peace – Barbara Kerley, 2007
• Paths to Peace: People Who Changed the World – Jane Breskin Zalben, 2004
• Peace One Day – Jeremy Gilley, 2005

See also

• List of peace activists
• List of anti-war songs
• List of anti-war plays

Notes

1. "More explicitly pacifist examples include...Hilda Doolittle's Bid Me To Live". "World War One Writing", in Faye Hammill, Esme Miskimmin, Ashlie Sponenberg (eds.) An Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 1900–1950. Palgrave, 2008 ISBN 0-230-22177-7 (p. 295).
2. Cynthia Wachwell, War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861–1914. Louisiana State University Press 2010, ISBN 0-8071-3562-3 (pp. 163-66).
3. Vincent B. Sherry, The Cambridge companion to the literature of the First World War. Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-521-82145-2 (p.102)
4. Angela K. Smith (2000). The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War. Manchester University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-7190-5301-6.
5. Despised and Rejected was banned by the British Government shortly after publication. See John Sloan (June 2004). "A War of Individuals: Bloomsbury Attitudes to the Great War by Jonathan Atkin". The Review of English Studies 55 (220): 478–480. doi:10.1093/res/55.220.478. Retrieved 1 September 2014.
6. "T.H. White declared the theme of his Arthurian fantasy, The Once and Future King written for the most part between 1938 and 1941, was to find "an antidote to war"". Tom Shippey, "Fantasy" in The Oxford Companion to English Literature edited by Margaret Drabble. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-19-861453-1 (p.351).
7. "The Wars is an anti-war novel". "Author uses fiction to show horrors of First World War".The Leader-Post, November 15, 1977 (p.47).
8. "Henri Barbusse, the author of the internationally famed anti-war novel Le Feu (Under Fire)"... Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction : Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War Oxford University Press, 2007 ISBN 0-19-151668-6, (p. 237).
9. "Karinthy, as a pacifist, is very bitter about the war...In asides Karithy expresses horror at the war, damning both Central Powers and Allies". "Voyage to Faremido and Capillaria" in E. F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press, 1990. (pp. 400-401). ISBN 978-0-87338-416-2.
10. Darko Suvin describes War with the Newts as "the pioneer of all anti-fascist and anti-militarist SF". Suvin, "Capek, Karel" in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers by Curtis C. Smith. St. James Press, 1986, ISBN 0-912289-27-9 (p.842-4).
11. "We That Were Young...[its] protagonist, Joan, loses her lover and brother in the war, undertakes vengeful service in a munitions factory, and finally converts to pacifism". Ashlie Sponenberg "Rathbone, Irene" in Faye Hammill, Esme Miskimmin, Sponenberg (eds.) An Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 1900–1950. London, Palgrave, 2008 ISBN 0-230-22177-7 (pp. 198–199).
12. "...his final excursion into visionary fiction...was Why Was I Killed?, an after-death fantasy on a pacifist theme". Michael Moorcock, "Introduction" to The Aerodrome by Rex Warner. Vintage Classics, 2007. ISBN 978-0-09-951156-4 (pp. ix-xx)
13. Robert A Seeley. "Further Reading", in The Handbook of non-violence, Including Aldous Huxley’s "An Encyclopedia of pacifism". Westport, Conn. : L. Hill ; Great Neck, N.Y., Lakeville Press, 1986. ISBN 0-88208-208-6 (pp. 333-334).
14. Martin Ceadel,"Selected Bibliography", in Pacifism in Britain, 1914–1945 : the defining of a faith. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1980. ISBN 0-19-821882-6 (pp. 323-333).
15. "Anti-war Book May Offend" (Review of The Causes of World War Three) Reading Eagle, - December 7, 1958 (p. 52)
16. Ben Lowe, Imagining peace: a history of early English pacifist ideas, 1340–1560.Penn State Press, 1997 ISBN 0-271-01689-2 (pp. 163-64).
17. Peter Van Den Dungen, "Jacob ter Meulen and Bart de Ligt as Pioneers of Peace History" in Harvey L. Dyck, The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8020-0777-5 (pp. 52-72)
18. "In 1922 C.E. Montague's Disenchantment began the flood of anti-war accounts by former soldiers..." Philip Towle, Democracy and peace making : negotiations and debates, 1815-1973. London : Routledge, 2000. ISBN 9780415214711 (p. 106).
19. Toibin, Colm (March 23, 2008). "Their Vilest Hour". The New York Times. Retrieved May 20, 2010.
20. "If the War Goes On: Herman Hesse's writing against war". The Village Voice, June 17, 1971, (p. 35).
21. "In Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) she added that social sentiments “must be enlightened, disciplined and directed by the fullest knowledge". The latter book was her plea for a civilized alternative to war". Gary J Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making : interpreting an American tradition. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4051-8687-2 (p. 177).
22. "As always with Macdonald, honesty won out (one almost adds, alas) and the "inside" political discussion reached its climax with his essay "The Root Is Man," in which he arrived at a kind of anarcho-pacifism based on an absolutist morality." Irving Howe, Selected Writings, 1950–1990 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990 ISBN 0-15-180390-0 (p. 257).
23. "For clues about how to save the planet from nuclear extinction, there is no better place to turn than to Lawrence S. Wittner's monumental three-volume study of the world disarmament movement from 1945 to the present...His first volume, One World or None, goes through 1953. Volume Two, Resisting the Bomb, takes us from 1954 through 1970. And his third and final volume, Toward Nuclear Abolition, just completed last year, brings it all up to the present". Matthew Rothschild, "Nuclear Alert", in The Progressive, March 1, 2004.
24. The making of a peacenik Mark Bostridge, The Guardian August 30, 2003. Retrieved January 18 2012.
25. "In Three Guineas (1938), arguing the case for the end of sexual discrimination against women and against war, Woolf insists on the need for women to have the same work opportunities as men". Harold Bloom,Virginia Woolf, Infobase Publishing, 2009 ISBN 1-4381-1548-2, (p. 87).
26. "Based on over 200 personal testimonies from the Imperial War Museum’s oral history collection, Voices Against War is a fascinating and lively survey of anti-war protest in the UK from 1914 to the present day." Ian Sinclair, Review of Voices Against War, Peace News, February 2010. Retrieved February 2013.
27. "When antiwar commemorative demonstrations took place all over Germany during the 1924 anniversary year, Friedrich published War Against War in Berlin with text and captions in four languages".Dora Apel,"Cultural Battlegrounds: Weimar Photographic Narratives of War". New German Critique No. 76, (Winter, 1999), (pp. 49-84)
28. Review of War Against War! Steve Andrew, The Morning Star, 4 August 2014. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
29. "A rare instance in which Newer Ideals of Peace has been anthologized is the inclusion of a brief excerpt from [Jane] Addams' chapter "The Passing of the War Virtues" in a collection edited by Arthur Weinberg and Lila Weinberg, Instead of Violence: Writings by the Great Advocates of Peace and Nonviolence throughout History… "Introduction" to Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace edited by Berenice A Carroll and Clinton F Fink Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2007, ISBN 0-252-03105-9 (p. lv).
30. Dan Buchanan, "Peace is the Way: Writings on Nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Review)". Sojourners Magazine. January 1, 2001
31. ""Children of the Book" (1982) describes the siege of Vienna of 1682 through the eyes of a janizary, a Polish youth, and the daughter of a burgher of Vienna; it is a powerful novel, anti-war, showing subtly the decline of the warring regimes, Polish knights and Ottoman janizaries, and the survival of the burgher". Obituary: Peter Carter by Elizabeth Hodgkin, The Independent, 24 August 1999. Retrieved 8 April 2013.