Vietnam War, 1961-1975 book series in reading order

by Max Allan Collins

by W.E.B. Griffin

Donald Eugene Pendleton (December 12, 1927 to October 23, 1995) was an American author of fiction and non-fiction who created Mack Bolan, a character with hundreds of millions of copies sold since a 1969 debut. From 1980, other authors wrote the Bolan books under the Pendleton name, at first with Pendleton's editorial guidance. Pendleton also wrote six Joe Copp, Private Eye novels and six Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective novels. Early titles include The Insatiables (1967), War Against the Mafia (1969) and Miami Massacre (1970).

Noam Chomsky

134 books• 4 series

Noam Chomsky (Avram Noam Chomsky, born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist and social critic, sometimes called the father of modern linguistics. Chomsky helped found cognitive science, is a major figure in analytic philosophy, and holds posts as laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and institute professor emeritus at MIT. The catalogue lists 134 books, starting with Syntactic Structures (1957) and reaching The Myth of American Idealism (2024). Subjects range from generative grammar to world politics and terrorism.

Naval aviation and espionage define Stephen Coonts's thrillers. Jake Grafton leads the series that opens with Flight of the Intruder (1986), Tommy Carmellini heads a later one, and the Saucer books and Deep Black sit alongside. Terrorism, conspiracies, undercover operations and the Vietnam War are recurring subjects. Thirty-eight books run to Dragon's Jaw in 2019, and nothing new has appeared since.

W.E.B. Griffin was the best-known pen name of William Edmund Butterworth III (November 10, 1929 to February 12, 2019), an American author of military and detective fiction. Under the Griffin name Butterworth published 59 novels across seven series, 21 of them written with Butterworth's son, William E. Butterworth IV. The catalogue files 194 titles here, including 1960s books issued as W.E. Butterworth, Webb Beech and Walker E. Blake. Series include Brotherhood of War, Presidential Agent and M*A*S*H, and World War II and the U.S. Marine Corps recur in the subjects.

Peter Straub

39 books• 2 series

Horror and psychological crime define Peter Straub's work, with the Vietnam War and its veterans behind a good deal of it. Ghost Story (1979), Shadowland (1980) and Floating Dragon (1982) belong to the horror line, while the Blue Rose Trilogy brings in serial murder and Tom Pasmore. Thirty-nine catalogued titles run from Ishmael (1972) to The Process (is a Process All Its Own) in 2017.

Max Allan Collins

199 books• 34 series

Max Allan Collins, born March 3, 1948, is an American mystery writer who also works in comics, graphic novels and screenplays. Collins created the Ms. Tree and Road to Perdition comics, the second of which became a film, and the series characters Quarry, a hitman, Nolan, a thief, and private investigator Nate Heller. Collins wrote the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for years, and the Mystery Writers of America named Collins a Grand Master in 2017. Catalogue entries run from Bait Money (1973) to Quarry's Reunion (2026), with Eliot Ness, Mallory and Disaster among the other series.

Joe Haldeman

48 books• 10 series

Joe Haldeman is an American science fiction writer whose 48 catalogued books begin with War Year (1972). The Forever War (1974) is his best known novel, drawn from his service as a combat soldier in Vietnam, and the Forever War name extends across later books, comics and graphic novel adaptations. The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997) took Hugo and Nebula awards alongside it. Worlds, Marsbound and Attar The Merman are his other series. Human-alien encounters, space colonies, hard science fiction and war supply the subject matter. Haldeman received the SFWA Grand Master award, entered the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012, and taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 to 2014.

David Halberstam

22 books

David Halberstam (1934-2007) was an American journalist and historian who wrote on the Vietnam War, politics, the civil rights movement, business, media, American culture, the Korean War and, later, sport. His 22 catalogued books open with The Making Of A Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era (1965) and include The Best and the Brightest (1969), The Powers That Be (1979), The Breaks of the Game (1981) and Summer of '49 (1989). Halberstam won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and died in a car crash in 2007 while researching a book. The last title, The Glory Game, appeared in 2009.

Sandra Brown

94 books• 11 series

Sandra Brown, born Sandra Lynn Cox on March 12, 1948, is an American author of romance and suspense thrillers. Brown has also published under three pen names: Rachel Ryan, Laura Jordan and Erin St. Claire. The catalogue counts 94 titles from 1981, when Love's Encore and Love Beyond Reason came out as Rachel Ryan, to Bloodlust (2026). Listed series include the Texas! Tyler Family Saga, the Coleman Family Saga, Mason Sisters and Lee Coburn. Texas, widows and murder recur among the subject headings.

Stephen Hunter, born March 25, 1946, is an American novelist, essayist and film critic. The 33 catalogued books run from The Master Sniper (1980) to The Gun Man Jackson Swagger (2025). Series include the Swaggerverse and Hunter's non-fiction. Recurring characters include Bob Lee Swagger, Earl Swagger and Ray Cruz. Subjects include snipers, veterans, thrillers, espionage and World War II. Other titles include Target (1985), Point of Impact (1993) and Dirty White Boys (1994).

Archer Mayor

36 books• 3 series

Joe Gunther is the Vermont policeman at the centre of Archer Mayor's procedurals. Open Season (1988) starts a run of 36 catalogued books reaching Fall Guy in 2022, with Brattleboro and the state's drug trade recurring in the subject records. Short stories and non-fiction sit beside the novels, and nothing later than 2022 is catalogued.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

10 books• 1 series

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a South Vietnamese-born American novelist and professor, born in 1971, who holds the Aerol Arnold Chair of English at the University of Southern California and teaches English, American Studies and Ethnicity there. The Sympathizer (2015), his debut novel, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Sympathizer is the one recorded series. Ten books are catalogued from Race and Resistance (2002) to To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other (2025), including Nothing Ever Dies (2016), The Refugees (2017), The Committed (2020), A Man of Two Faces (2023) and Simone (2024). The Vietnam War, refugees, Asian American writing and race in literature fill the subject index. Nguyen holds a MacArthur Fellowship and a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, and writes an opinion column for The New York Times.