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Norman Mailer
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The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author Hardcover – May 15, 1998

by Norman Mailer (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 1,344 ratings
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Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since enjoyed a long and well-deserved tenure in the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948 with the wisdom of a man twice Mailer's age and the raw courage of the young man he was, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.
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  1. Print length
    722 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Henry Holt and Co.
  4. Publication date
    May 15, 1998
  5. Dimensions
    5.86 x 1.88 x 8.44 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0805060189
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0805060188
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This 50th-anniversary edition of Mailer's World War II epic contains a new introduction by the author. If your current copy is falling apart, now is the time to replace it.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Nightmarish masterpiece of realism."--Celeveland News

"The most important American novel since Moby Dick."--Providence Journal

"The best novel to come out of the . . . war, perhaps the best book to come out of any war."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Brutal, agonizing, astonishingly thoughtful."--Newsweek

"Vibrant with life, abundant with real people, full of memorable scenes. To call it merely a great book about the war would be to minimize its total achievement."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Best novel yet about World War II."--Time

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt and Co.; Anniversary edition (May 15, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 722 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805060189
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805060188
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.86 x 1.88 x 8.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 1,344 ratings

About the author

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Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

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Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor and political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948. His best-known work was widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, which was published in 1979, and for which he won one of his two Pulitzer Prizes. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his book Armies of the Night was awarded the National Book Award.

Along with Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in fact-based journalism.

Mailer was also known for his essays, the most renowned of which was "The White Negro." He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his views through his novels, journalism, essays and frequent media appearances.

In 1955, Mailer and four others founded The Village Voice, an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
1,344 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Gaby Castillo
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good book
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2024
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Its the first time I read a war book from the field perspective. Every one should read it. The crude reality is that no man enjoys war. War should not exist.
Its a great book for young men to read and understand that guns hurt, not only the body but the soul.
2 people found this helpful
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Steven Daedalus
4.0 out of 5 stars Life is no bowl of cherries.
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2009
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Many, many years ago, in high school, I read this novel. As time passed, all I could really remember of it were a few isolated points. A poor farmer in overalls spits on the dirt and says, "Reckon it's a law of life." A sergeant named Croft deliberately shoots a union man just to see what it feels like. (That was a shocker 60 years ago.) "I don't know why I'm not more popular with the girls; I'm such an easy lay." "Kunai" grass. The agony in wrestling cannon along a jungle trail that seems to have no end. I'd never read such an apt description of physical exhaustion and still haven't. Some men carrying a comrade with a belly wound, and he's moaning with thirst, and his carriers are tired of schlepping him to the rear and one of his buddies begins saying, "Aww, give him a little water," so he can die and shut up. Oh -- and "fug."

I recently started reading it again, with a little more experience behind me, and I don't think I'm quite as impressed as I remember being. There's nothing particularly "reportorial" about the novel. It gets into more than enough detail of the men's lives for us to understand, in part, how they got to be what they are. Much of it's pretty colorful too. But we don't really need a bum's life spelled out to that extent.

Mailer uses a device called "The Time Machine" to take us back to the childhood and the subsequent development of each man in the squad, plus Lieutenant Hearn. Here, the writing is impressionistic but not badly done. In the rest of the text, he observes the usual grammatical rules.

I had a hard time believing some of the relationships. Lieutenant Hearn argues with -- practically insults -- General Cummings. Well, I've been in the military since I first read this, and that relationship is not concordant with my impressions of how the status ladder is structure.

My overall impression at this point -- I'm about half-way through -- is that it's well written, the characters are distinct, and it's a little wordy. Not to mention that if an alien from the planet Ymir in the Crab Nebula of Orion were to read only this, in an attempt to get an impression of life on Earth, he or it would conclude that we're a pretty depressing bunch of organisms. Even when the men are drunk on jungle juice and laughing, Mailer the omniscient lets us know about the anger, frustration, and sadness roiling around inside. Everybody has had a lousy life and is unhappy. Well, maybe with the exception of Goldstein. Goldstein may not be exactly happy. Who COULD be under these conditions? But at least he's relatively normal.

In his forward, the aged Mailer criticizes this early work. Coffee must be "scalding." But that's okay. The adjectival cliches are there but they don't leap out at you. I found it interesting that Mailer admits he set out to write a blockbuster novel. I'm not at all surprised to find out that he set out to DO it. I'm surprised he admits it. As Woody Allen says, when asked who Norman Mailer was, "He was a writer. Very popular. He left his ego to Harvard Medical School."
8 people found this helpful
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J. Cohen
5.0 out of 5 stars There are no heroes
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2014
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At the end of the novel it reads "widely consider the best novel written about World War II". Not having read all the books about WWII I can't say this is true.

What I can say is that it is an amazing exploration of humanity. The brutality in the book is more in the honesty of this examination than in the fighting. It's beauty comes from this same brutality. Men straining themselves beyond the point of exhaustion. Each trying, and failing, desperately to maintain their connection to the people they were before the war.

At one point a character comes to the realization that he isn't the type to be fueled by challenges, to keep going no matter what. He says he doesn't have the ability to be a hero. That he realized suddenly that he'd always just tried to stay out of the way of people like that.
2 people found this helpful
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Charles Source
3.0 out of 5 stars Wow, that was a long read! Grim realism …
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2022
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This is a hard-hitting ‘war novel’ -- gritty, realistic and all the rest … but man is it long. And there tends to be long description passages and heavy use of multiple adjectives (e.g. “small hunched shoulders”). I feel like some of it could have been trimmed. There are also multiple flashback sequences about most (but oddly not all) of the characters in the book, and by the end I started to question if they were really necessary. Do the flashbacks add so much to the characters that they’re worth the extra 200 pages (or whatever)? Because you get plenty of characterization from reading about the guys in the present situation.

Also the book is grim. Yes, it’s a war novel, so I guess that’s to be expected. Its graphic and disturbing in its depictions of the destruction of body parts/killing of Japanese soldiers, etc., but on top of that I found the tone of the book somewhat bleak and cynical. Maybe that’s intentional, as it’s a tale about groups of soldiers killing each other, but for me it seemed like something was lacking – a shred of hope or positive outlook about humanity. In fact the general theme of novel could be said to be ‘disillusionment’ (which is ironic given that the author, in the intro to 50th anniversary edition, implies there’s some kind of ‘hope’ in the story. Really??? Where?).

Anyway, The Naked and the Dead is not for the faint of heart or those without a crapload of time on their hands to make it through the 700+ pages. Although I can see how some would regard it as ‘classic’ given its plethora of details, in-depth character studies and massive scope, the author himself, in the aforementioned intro (which I didn’t read until finishing the story), admits the book is a form of the ‘bestseller’ and has some amateurish qualities.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Cyprien
5.0 out of 5 stars 名作だと思う。
Reviewed in Japan on March 5, 2022
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文体とか詩的な雰囲気が好きです。
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Bryn Moody
4.0 out of 5 stars The naked and the dead
Reviewed in Spain on October 9, 2016
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The book is credible, and acceptable as a collection of genuine war experiences. It is, however, too long, and should have been broken up into three or four war novels. The characters are well-defined (the Time Machine resource is well-used) and the general philosophy (the stupid uselessness of war) is timeless. As a beginner's piece (Mailer was only 24) it is worthy of great praise.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Very complex, riveting and well written story of men ...
Reviewed in Canada on October 13, 2015
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Very complex, riveting and well written story of men pushed to the limit of there endurance in the ugly arena.
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Christian Guth
5.0 out of 5 stars Buchempfehlung
Reviewed in Germany on March 21, 2014
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Ein sehr gutes Buch, das in tragischer Weise die Umstände des Krieges schildert.
Ein Glück kam alles sehr schnell. ich bin sehr zufrieden.
Freue mich auf das nächste Mal. Super.
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Fabio moody impro
5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable classic
Reviewed in Italy on December 16, 2013
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From the officers to the privates, the life and the war of american army soldiers almost trapped in a Pacific island who can only go ahead with battles and personal psychological searching of themselves.
A must read not only by those who love war books.
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