The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

War is abstract for people like me.

Occasionally I'll watch Mark Wahlberg kill terrorists over a beer, and that's only ever during the downtime between bouts at work, a place where I'm saturated with idiosyncrasies that are even further removed from politics and culture and the contention they stir up. Bush's got his mission, Obama's sending drones out, Trumps doing Syrian things, I'm thinking about whether the corporate software I write could be 7% faster and if I should eat eggs for dinner or go shop for proper groceries.

So when I think about war and ideology, it's easier for me to default to fantastic reductions. The Nazis are evil aliens and good always prevails, rock beats scissors and America will save the day through pure will and righteousness.

But that's childish thinking. The details of the mechanics in play are much more nuanced and a precise investigation of them is, if anything else, extremely interesting and involved.

The Naked and the Dead is that investigation, at least for WWII.