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I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.

If you're going to write about war, which my books are about, wars are nasty things. I think it's sort of a cheap, easy way out to write a war story in which no one ultimately dies.

It is important to understand how leaders have adapted and thought about war and warfare across their careers. 'The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War' is perhaps the best war memoir ever written.

I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

In some ways, the best novel about terrorism, though it's not a novel, is 'The Looming Tower' by Lawrence Wright or 'Perfect Soldiers' by Terry McDermott.

I've read pretty broadly on the Holocaust - both fiction and non-fiction - and to me, 'The Lost Wife' is one of the best. The horrors of war serve as a backdrop to a love affair that spans a lifetime, and that love story stayed with me long after I put down the book.

There is a lot of evidence to back up the assertion that war fiction takes time. Many all-time classics of the genre, from Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' to Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,' took over a decade to pen.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

My favorite book is 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee. It is multi-layered, and I see something new in it every time I read it.

Anyone who's traveled with me to Afghanistan knows why I love this book: 'War,' by Sebastian Junger.