James Jones

James Jones' epic drama of army life in the calm before Pearl Harbor comes to Penguin Modern Classics—now with previously censored scenes restored. Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a career soldier and a champion welterweight. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team for reasons he will not explain, he is subjected to...

James Jones' classic of combat literature is a brutal and devastating portrait of the senselessness of war. The soldiers of C-for-Charlie Company are not cast from the heroic mould. The unit's captain is too intelligent and sensitive for the job, his first sergeant is psychotic, and the enlisted men begin the campaign gripped by cowardice. But they will all discover...