Before becoming a full-time writer, Kevin McColley worked many jobs, including operating a nuclear reactor. He served in the U.S. Navy for six years, during which he traveled throughout the Caribbean pursuing drug runners. He also spent eight months in the Mediterranean recovering downed U.S. pilots, both dead and alive, and he patrolled Gaddafi’s “line of death.”
McColley is the author of several novels, including The Other Side: A Novel of the Civil War.
At Shepherd he tagged five of the best books about surviving war (or not), including:
The Iliad by Homer, Robert Fagles (translator)Read about the other entries on the list.
The earliest and perhaps the greatest book about the psychology of war ever written. Perhaps nowhere in all of fiction is therea better description of a character who suffers trauma from violence, both in inflicting it and in receiving it, than Achilles. If you read no other, then read this.
The Iliad also appears on Sarah Crossan's top ten list of verse novels, Maaza Mengiste's top ten list of books about the human cost of war, Ani Katz's top ten list of books about toxic masculinity, John Gittings's list of five top books on peace, Becky Ferreira's list of her seven favorite tales of revenge in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on the Olympians, Madeline Miller's list of ten favorite classical works, Bettany Hughes's six best books list, James Anderson Winn's five best list of works of war poetry, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best funerals in literature and ten of the best examples of ekphrasis. It is one of Karl Marlantes's top ten war stories.
--Marshal Zeringue
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