I should have mentioned this last week when I first heard the sad news.
Why Herman Wouk’s ‘War’ Novels Deserve Remembrance Today
The best way to remember—or discover—the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Herman Wouk may be his World War II epics.
By Warren Henry, the Federalist
Best-selling author Herman Wouk passed away last week, ten days short of his 104th birthday. Wouk is probably best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Caine Mutiny” (1951), if only for Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of the cowardly and paranoid Capt. Queeg in the movie adaptation (of which Wouk was not a fan).
However, the best way to remember—or discover—Wouk may be his World War II epics: “The Winds of War” (1971) and “War and Remembrance” (1978). As a writer whose Jewish faith often informed his work, Wouk set out to write a novel about the Holocaust. It is a doubly impressive achievement that he first wrote another highly entertaining novel just to provide the context for the second.
I heard the news of his passing while we were in the process of sorting and shelving our books, among which are all three tomes mentioned in the above article. If you have not read The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, you owe it to yourself to do so.