Explore the latest books of this year!
Bookbot

Hanson Series

This series plunges into the raw realities of war, specifically the Vietnam conflict, through the eyes of a young soldier. It chronicles his journey from naive college graduate to hardened veteran, grappling with the horrors of battle, complex relationships, and internal demons. Written in vivid, nightmarish prose, these works offer a profound and authentic look at traumatic experiences and the difficult return to civilian life.

Green Sun
Night Dogs
Sympathy for the Devil

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Sympathy for the Devil

    • 399 pages
    • 14 hours of reading
    4.1(19)Add rating

    Censured by some critics for its brutality but heralded by others as a modern-day classic, Sympathy for the Devil is a terrifying, intoxicating journey through the violence, madness, and insane beauty of battle. It traces the story of a hardened Green Beret named Hanson, a college student who goes to war with a book of Yeats's poetry in his pocket and discovers the savagery within himself.In this extraordinary novel, we follow Hanson through two tours of duty and a bitter attempt to live as a civilian in between. At one with the lush and dangerous world around him in Vietnam, Hanson is doomed to survive the landscape of devastation he encounters. Sympathy for the Devil contains some of the most vivid, finely etched prose ever written about the actual process of war—from firing a weapon for the first time in battle to the moment a young man knows that he has entered a living hell and found a home....

    Sympathy for the Devil
  2. 2

    Night Dogs

    • 496 pages
    • 18 hours of reading
    4.0(12)Add rating

    Acclaimed crime writer Kent Anderson's "fiercely authentic and deeply disturbing" police novel, following a Vietnam veteran turned cop on the meanest streets of 1970s Portland, Oregon (Los Angeles Times). Two kinds of cops find their way to Portland's North Precinct: those who are sent there for punishment, and those who come for the action. Officer Hanson is the second kind, a veteran who survived the war in Vietnam only to decide he wanted to keep fighting at home. Hanson knows war, and in this battle for the Portland streets, he fights not for the law but for his own code of justice. Yet Hanson can't outrun his memories of another, warmer battleground. A past he thought he'd left behind, that now threatens to overshadow his future. An enemy, this time close to home, is prying into his war record. Pulling down the shields that protect the darkest moments of that fevered time. Until another piece of his past surfaces, and Hanson risks his career, his sanity--even his life--for honor.

    Night Dogs
  3. 3

    Green Sun

    4.0(16)Add rating

    Oakland, 1982: one good cop against the world. GREEN SUN is the long-awaited third novel from cult author Kent Anderson.

    Green Sun