Anthony Swofford, a Gulf War veteran, is the author of Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (Scribner, $24).
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Vintage, $17). Mann’s Hans Castorp is an early-20th-century guide into the emotional and philosophical horrors of warfare and nationalism. The prose is pure song, and around page 500, after Hans enters the woods during a snowstorm, the reader, like Hans, never returns to his former, simpler, and healthier self.
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