Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk has achieved a remarkable following among the American reading public. He is best known for his World War II novels, in particular The Caine Mutiny, his controversial story of the U.S. Navy during World War II. Still in print more than forty years after its publication, the best-selling novel inspired a popular stage play and a now classic motion picture. Wouk's later panoramic fictional histories of World War II - Winds of War and War and Remembrance - were the basis for a popular American television miniseries during the 1980s. In this long overdue study, Laurence W. Mazzeno reviews each of the author's nine novels. The study incorporates an assessment of Wouk's ideologies, tracing them throughout his best novels. In addition, Mazzeno includes a thorough evaluation of the critical response to Wouk's work by featuring generous quotations from contemporary reviews of the novels. Mazzeno's bibliography and examination of previously uncollected criticism scattered throughout magazines newspapers and literary reviews is a first. Wouk, a writer of highly popular novels for more than forty years, has been the subject of only one book-length study; Mazzeno's Herman Wouk clearly fills this void.