List of books with anti-war themes

Books with anti-war themes have explicit anti-war messages or have been described as having significant anti-war themes or sentiments. Not all of these books have a direct connection to any particular anti-war movement. The list includes fiction and non-fiction, and books for children and younger readers.

Fiction

• All Men Are Enemies – Richard Aldington
• Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson – George I. Gurdjieff, 1949
• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque, 1928
• The Americanization of Emily – William Bradford Huie, 1964
• Ashe of Rings – Mary Butts novel, 1926^[1]
• Bid Me To Live – H.D. novel, 1960^[2]
• Captain Jinks, Hero – Ernest Crosby, 1902^[3][4]
• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller, 1961
• A Doctor's Journal Entry For 6 August,1945 - Vikram Seth
• Cat's Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut science fiction novel
• Celestial Matters – Richard Garfinkle science fiction novel
• Company K – William March novel
• Dead Yesterday – Mary Agnes Hamilton novel, 1916^[5]
• Death Of A Hero – Richard Aldington
• Despised and Rejected – Rose Allatini novel (published under the name A. T. Fitzroy) 1918^[6][7]
• A Fable – William Faulkner, 1954, World War I
• The Empty Drum - Leo Tolstoy, 1887
• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway, 1929
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway, 1940
• The Forever War – Joe Haldeman science fiction novel
• From Here to Eternity – James Jones novel
• Generals Die in Bed – Charles Yale Harrison novel
• The Good Soldier Svejk – Jaroslav Hašek novel
• Involution & Evolution – Joss Sheldon novel
• Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo novel, 1938
• Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline novel
• Lay Down Your Arms! – Bertha von Suttner novel
• Looking Good – Keith Maillard novel^[8]
• Legend of Galactic Heroes – Tanaka Yoshiki
• Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes – Keith Maillard novel^[9]
• Lysistrata – Aristophanes play, 411 BCE
• The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer novel
• Non-Combatants and Others – Rose Macaulay novel, 1916^[5]
• Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War – Evadne Price (as Helen Zenna Smith) novel, 1930
• On the Beach – Nevil Shute novel
• The Once and Future King – T. H. White, 1958^[10]
• Paths of Glory – Humphrey Cobb, 1935^[11]
• Quiet Ways – Katharine Burdekin novel, 1930^[12]
• The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane novel, 1895
• Regeneration – Pat Barker
• Shabdangal – Malayalam novel, 1947
• The Short-Timers – Gustav Hasford novel
• Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut science fiction novel
• The Sorrow of War – Bảo Ninh novel, 1990
• The Thin Red Line – James Jones novel, 1962
• The Things They Carried – Tim O'Brien, 1990
• Three Soldiers – John Dos Passos novel, 1921, World War I
• The Tin Drum – Günter Grass novel
• The Train Was on Time (Der Zug war pünktlich) – Heinrich Böll novel, 1949
• Two Women – Alberto Moravia novel, 1958
• Under Fire – Henri Barbusse novel, 1916^[13]
• The Unknown Soldier – Väinö Linna novel, 1954
• Voyage to Faremido – Frigyes Karinthy novel, 1916^[14]
• "War" - Ludwig Renn novel, 1928.
• War Porn - Roy Scranton novel, 2016.
• "The War Prayer" – Mark Twain short story, c.1910
• War with the Newts – Karel Čapek, novel 1936^[15]
• The Wars – Timothy Findley novel, 1977^[16]
• We That Were Young – Irene Rathbone novel, 1932^[17]
• Why Are We in Vietnam? – Norman Mailer novel, 1967
• Why Was I Killed? (retitled Return of the Traveller in the US) – Rex Warner novel, 1943^[18]

Non-fiction

• Addicted to War – Joel Andreas, 1991, 2002
• Old Man at the Bridge - Ernest Hemingway May 1938
• An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era – Charles DeBenedetti, 1990
• The Armies of the Night – Norman Mailer non-fiction novel, 1968
• Autobiography:The Story of my Experiments with Truth – Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1927^[19]
• The Bloody Traffic – Fenner Brockway, 1934^[20]
• Born on the Fourth of July – Ron Kovic autobiography, 1976
• The Causes of World War Three – C. Wright Mills, 1958^[21]
• Choosing Peace: A Handbook on War, Peace, and Your Conscience – Robert A. Seeley, 1994
• The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War – Paul R. Ehrlich, Carl Sagan and Donald Kennedy, 1984
• Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians – Chris Hedges, 2008
• The Complaint of Peace – Desiderius Erasmus, 1517^[22]
• The Conduct of the Allies – Jonathan Swift, 1711
• The Conquest of Violence – Bart de Ligt, 1937^[23]
• Cry Havoc! – Beverley Nichols, 1933^[20]
• Disenchantment – C. E. Montague, 1922^[24]
• The Education of a Christian Prince – Desiderius Erasmus, 1516^[22]
• Einstein on Peace – edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden; preface by Bertrand Russell, 1960^[20]
• Ends and Means – Aldous Huxley essays, 1937^[20]
• Fate of the Earth – Jonathan Schell, 1982
• The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now – Jonathan Schell, 1998
• Good-Bye to All That - Robert Graves, 1929
• Hiroshima – John Hersey account of the bombings, 1946
• Human Smoke – Nicholson Baker^[25]
• If the War Goes On … – Hermann Hesse, 1971^[26]
• In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter – Gordon C. Zahn, 1981^[19]
• The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War – Frederick Downs, 1978
• The Kingdom of God is Within You – Leo Tolstoy, 1894
• The Inevitable Revolution – Leo Tolstoy, 1909
• Krieg dem Kriege aka War Against War – Ernst Friedrich, 1924^[27][28]
• The Last Weapon and its sequel The Weapon Unsheathed – Theodora Wilson Wilson, 1916
• The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 – Jill Liddington, 1989^[29]
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago – Norman Mailer non-fiction novel, 1968
• New Cyneas – Émeric Crucé, 1623
• Newer Ideals of Peace – Jane Addams, 1907^[30]
• No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran – Murray Polner, 1971
• Nonviolence: The history of a dangerous idea – Mark Kurlansky, 2006
• Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe – Graham Allison, 2004
• Nuclear Weapons: The Road to Zero – edited by Joseph Rotblat, 1998
• Pacifism in Europe to 1914, Peter Brock, 1972^[20]
• Pacifism in the Twentieth Century – Peter Brock and Nigel Young, 1999
• Pacifism in the United States – Peter Brock, 1968^[20]
• Peace Is Possible: Conversations with Arab and Israeli Leaders from 1988 to the Present – S. Daniel Abraham, Bill Clinton, 2006
• Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated – James Mann, editor, 2004
• Peace with Honour – A. A. Milne, 1934^[20]
• A People's History of the United States – Howard Zinn, 1980
• Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch – Immanuel Kant essay, 1795
• The Politics of Jesus – John Howard Yoder, 1972
• The Power of Non-Violence – Richard B. Gregg, 1934^[20]
• The Root Is Man: Two Essays in Politics – Dwight Macdonald, 1953^[31]
• Scapegoats of the Empire – Lt. George Witton memoir, 1907
• Science, Liberty and Peace – Aldous Huxley, 1946
• The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger – Jonathan Schell, 2007
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 1 - One World or None: a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement through 1953 – Lawrence S. Wittner, 1993^[32]
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 2 - Resisting the Bomb: a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, 1954-1970 – Lawrence S. Wittner, 1997^[32]
• The Struggle Against the Bomb 3 - Toward Nuclear Abolition: a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, 1971 to the present – Lawrence S. Wittner, 2003^[32]
• Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain, 1933^[33]
• The Third Morality – Gerald Heard, 1937^[20]
• Three Guineas – Virginia Woolf, 1938^[34]
• Conscience for Change, reprinted as The Trumpet of Conscience – (five transcribed lectures given by) Martin Luther King Jr., 1968^[19]
• Voices Against War: A Century of Protest – Lyn Smith, 2009^[35]
• War and Democracy – Paul Gottfried, 2012
• War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning – Chris Hedges, 2003
• War Is a Lie – David Swanson, 2010
• War Is a Racket – former U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler speech, 1933 and pamphlet, 1935
• Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War – Timmon Wallis, 2024
• We Will Not Cease – Archibald Baxter memoir, 1939
• Which Way to Peace? – Bertrand Russell, 1936^[20]
• White Flash, Black Rain: Women of Japan Relive the Bomb – L. Vance-Watkins and A. Mariko, eds., 1995
• Why Didn't You Have To Go To Vietnam, Daddy? – Steve Wilken, Starving Writers Publishing, 2009
• Why Men Fight – Bertrand Russell, 1916^[20]
• Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace – Judith Hand, 2003 ^{[citation needed]}
• Worthy of Gratitude? Why Veterans May Not Want to be Thanked for Their Service in War – Camillo Mac Bica, Gnosis Press, 2015
• Writings Against Power and Death – Alex Comfort, 1994

Anthologies of anti-war writing

• Instead of Violence: Writings by the Great Advocates of Peace and Nonviolence throughout History – edited by Arthur Weinberg and Lila Shaffer Weinberg, 1963^[19][36]
• The Pacifist Conscience – edited by Peter Mayer, 1966^[19]
• Peace is the Way: writings on nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation – edited by Walter Wink^[37]
• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now – Murray Polner, Thomas Woods, 2008

Juvenile fiction

• The Butter Battle Book – Dr. Seuss, 1984
• Children of the Book – Peter Carter, 1982^[38]
• The Clay Marble – Minfong Ho novel, 1991
• Fallen Angels – Walter Dean Myers novel, 1988
• Habibi – Naomi Shihab Nye novel, 1997
• I Had Seen Castles – Cynthia Rylant, 1993
• Soldier's Heart: A Novel of the Civil War – Gary Paulsen novel, 1998
• Sunrise over Fallujah – Walter Dean Myers, 2008^[39]
• War Horse – Michael Morpurgo, 1982
• When the Horses Ride By: Children in the Times of War – Greenfield, Gilchrist poems and illus., 2006
• Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum (published posthumously), Reilly & Lee, 1920.

Juvenile non-fiction

• Ain't Gonna Study War No More: The Story of America's Peace Seekers – Milton Meltzer, 2002
• Lines in the Sand: New Writing on War and Peace – Hoffman and Lassister, eds. essays, stories, poems, 2003
• A Little Peace – Barbara Kerley, 2007
• Operation Warhawks: How Young People Become Warriors – Terrence Webster-Doyle, 1993
• Paths to Peace: People Who Changed the World – Jane Breskin Zalben, 2004
• Peace One Day – Jeremy Gilley, 2005
• Some Reasons for War: How Families, Myths and Warfare Are Connected – Sue Mansfield, 1988

See also

• List of peace activists
• List of anti-war songs
• List of anti-war plays
• List of anti-war films