Vietnam War, 1961-1975 book series in reading order

by Max Allan Collins

by W.E.B. Griffin

by Jonathan Cain

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.

David Sherman (1944–2022) was an American novelist whose work focused on military themes at the small-unit tactical level, drawing on service in the United States Marines. The catalogue holds 39 books from Knives in the Night (1987) to The Last Campaigns (2021). Series include Starfist, Starfist: Force Recon, Night Fighter Saga, Demontech and 18th Race. Subjects include Marines, the Vietnam War and military science fiction.

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.

William H. Keith writes military fiction and science fiction. Naval warfare supplies much of the subject matter, from Navy SEALs and aircraft carriers to submarines, naval battles and the Vietnam War, with men's adventure and espionage alongside. The catalogue runs to 116 titles dated between 1985 and 2021, and the 1990s are its busiest decade. SEAL Team Seven, Carrier, Warstrider, Silent Service, Freedom's Rangers, Cybernarc and Renegade Legion are among the series. The listing also carries tabletop game material, sourcebooks and CD-ROM game guides under Keith's name, including Twilight: 2000 titles. No book is listed after 2021.

Robert Olen Butler

29 books• 5 series

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler's short story collection, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. Butler, born January 20, 1945, is an American fiction writer whose catalogue runs to 29 books published between 1981 and 2021. The Vietnam War appears among the recorded subjects, along with the First World War, veterans and married people. The Alleys of Eden (1981) opens the listing, followed by Sun Dogs (1982), Countrymen of Bones (1983) and On Distant Ground (1985), and Late City (2021) is the newest entry. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is the character of one recorded series.

Leonard B. Scott writes war stories and espionage thrillers, with the Vietnam War, World War II, the Cambodian Civil War and the FBI among the catalogue subjects. Charlie Mike (1985) is the earliest of 10 catalogued books, followed by The Last Run (1987) and The Battle of Hill 875, Dak To, Vietnam 1967 (1988). The Expendables (1991), The Iron Men (1993) and Solemn Duty (1997) come later. Last Run carries a 2023 date.

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.

Military history and men's adventure fiction fill Charles W. Sasser's catalogue of 47 books, published between 1984 and 2017. World War II, the Vietnam War, terrorism and the careers of military officers supply most of the subject matter, in titles such as One Shot - One Kill (1990) and Smoke Jumpers (1996). Sasser's fiction series are Detachment Delta, Six and OSS Commando. The list opens with No Gentle Streets (1984) and ends with Crushing the Collective (2017).

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.

James Webb

10 books

James Henry Webb Jr., born on February 9, 1946, is an American author and politician. Webb is a retired Marine Corps officer and has been a United States senator from Virginia, secretary of the Navy, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs and counsel to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Webb has also worked as a journalist and filmmaker. The catalogue lists 10 books from Micronesia and U.S. Pacific Strategy (1974) to I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir (2014), among them Fields of Fire (1978), A Sense of Honor (1981) and Born Fighting (2004).

Sniping and commando operations are the subjects John L. Plaster's catalogue returns to across 8 books published between 1993 and 2017. Ultimate Sniper (1993) is a training manual for military and police snipers. Three titles cover the Studies and Observations Group of the US Military Assistance Command in Vietnam: SOG: Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam (1997), SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars (2000) and Secret Commandos (2004). Later books reach back to Civil War sharpshooting and, in Sniping in the Trenches (2017), to the First World War.

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.

Walter Dean Myers (born Walter Milton Myers; August 12, 1937 - July 1, 2014) was an American writer known above all for young adult literature. Myers was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, grew up in Harlem, and turned to writing after a hard childhood, with encouragement from teachers. Myers wrote more than 100 books, picture books and nonfiction among them, and won the Coretta Scott King Award five times. Fallen Angels (1988) ranks among the most frequently challenged books in the U.S. for adult language and realistic depiction of the Vietnam War. The catalogue lists 123 books starting with The Dancers (1972), including Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff (1975) and The Young Landlords (1979).

Barry Sadler

35 books• 1 series

Casca is the recurring character in the fiction of Barry Allen Sadler, and the catalogue lists 35 titles dated 1977 to 2001, with mercenary troops, prisoners of war, murder for hire and the Vietnam War among the recorded subjects. The Moi (1977) is the earliest entry, followed by God of Death and The Eternal Mercenary in 1979. Sadler, an American singer-songwriter as well as an author, was born November 1, 1940 and died November 5, 1989, at 49, shot in the head in Guatemala City. Military service ran through the work: the Air Force first, then the Army as a Green Beret medic at the rank of staff sergeant, and Vietnam from late December 1964 to late May 1965. The 1966 number-one song The Ballad of the Green Berets carries his name furthest.

Nicholas Cain is a private investigator and an author of action novels. The Vietnam War and the 1st Cavalry Division head the recorded subjects, alongside thrillers. The catalogue holds 26 books from War Dogs (1984) to Bronze Star Blues (2019), and the run is marked likely complete. Chopper 1 and Little Saigon are the two series on file under the Cain name.

Winston Groom

24 books• 2 series

Forrest Gump (1986) is the best known novel by Winston Groom (1943–2020), an American author. The book became a 1990s film directed by Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks, and Groom followed it with the sequel Gump & Co. in 1995. Groom also wrote 15 nonfiction books, five of them biographies, on topics including the Civil War. El Paso (2016) was his final novel, and The Patriots (2020) is the last of 24 catalogued books.

Steve Watkins is the author of the Ghosts Of War series and of 14 catalogued books dated 1997 to 2023. The first is The Black O: Racism and Redemption in an American Corporate Empire (1997); Stolen by Night (2023) is the latest. Subject tags pair race discrimination in employment with children's fiction, ghosts, soldiers, the Second World War and the Vietnam War. Down Sand Mountain, Juvie, The Secret of Midway, Lost at Khe Sanh and AWOL in North Africa are among the titles.