Reading List
Geoff Dyer
Writer and Critic
Geoff Dyer has spent a career refusing to stay in one genre, writing about jazz (But Beautiful), photography (The Ongoing Moment), the First World War (The Missing of the Somme), and his own failure to write a book about D.H. Lawrence (Out of Sheer Rage). He won the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2015 and now teaches at USC. He is an unusually generous critic of other people’s reporting, and reads war writing with a particular eye for what the prose is doing rather than only what it describes.
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Chronicle of a Trial
by Emmanuel Carrère · 2024 · Nonfiction
“reporting on the trial of the 20 men accused of the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris lies in the willingness of a not always modest author to subordinate himself utterly to the task at hand.” — via Article
The Forever War
by Dexter Filkins · 2008 · Nonfiction
“This is reportage on par with fiction of the highest quality.” — via Article
Dispatches
by Michael Herr · 1977 · Nonfiction
“An intoxicating mix of new journalism, stoned combat reportage, and memoir that achieved the perfect form and style to convey the dreadful futility unleashed by America on Vietnam.” — via Article
The Soccer War
by Ryszard Kapuscinski · 1978 · Nonfiction
“He remains a giant of global literature and a far worthier recipient of the Nobel Prize than some who received it.” — via Article
Brave Men
by Ernie Pyle · 1944 · Nonfiction
“It's hard to appreciate now just how widely read and loved Pyle was as America's voice from the front lines of Europe. He shared the dangers of the soldiers he was writing about.” — via Article
The Face of War
by Martha Gellhorn · 1959 · Nonfiction
“I gave up trying to think or judge, and turned myself into a walking tape recorder with eyes.” — via Article