Works by
James Webb
(aka James H. Webb)
(Politician, Writer)

Fiction

• Fields of Fire (1978)
  Hailed as the most important novel to emerge from the Vietnam War, Fields of Fire launched a spectacular writing career for James Webb in 1978. A much-decorated former marine who fought and was wounded in Vietnam, Webb tells the story of a platoon of tough, young marines enduring the tropical hell of Southeast Asian jungles while facing an invisible enemy--in a war no one understands. It is a powerful work that brilliantly expresses the basic ambiguity of war: the repulsion of war's destruction contrasted with the grisly attraction of war as the ultimate test of survival.

• A Sense of Honor (1981)

• A Country Such As This (1983)
  The innocence the 1950s and turbulence of the 1960s and 70s--years when America reached out and touched the heavens, only to be torn apart by internal conflict and a war in Southeast Asia--provide a dramatic setting for this unforgettable story of three men and the women they love carving a place for themselves in a society where the rules keep changing. Written by bestselling novelist James Webb, it has been hailed as a major work of our time and a stunning commentary of political and social life in America over nearly three decades. From the wars in Korea and Vietnam to antiwar protests in Washington and POW camps in Hanoi, from young love and parenthood to divorce and reconciliation, Webb's eye for detail, provocative insights, and subtle revelations have earned him the highest literary accolades. His convincing characters and gripping scenes fully engage the reader as the three Naval Academy graduates reevaluate their lives, their country, and the cost of success.

• The Emperor's General (1999)
  A provocative novel of historical intrigue, gripping drama, and haunting romance suffused with the mystery and seduction of the Orient.
  
  1997.  Jay Marsh, Wall Street millionaire and grand old man of the diplomatic corps, takes a sentimental journey to the scene of his first triumphs and agonies, Manila, where as a brash young captain during World War Two he served as aide-de-camp and confidant to General Douglas MacArthur.  Marsh sees beyond the glittery capital of today to the horrifying days of 1945.  The retreating Japanese army had devastated everything in its wake.  The city was set ablaze and one hundred thousand innocents were slaughtered.  Marsh was forced to leave behind his Filipino fiancée and accompany MacArthur to Japan.  Now, as the senior statesman stands in the serene garden of the ambassador's residence, his mind reels back in time. . . .
  
  In the final days of the war in the Pacific, the Philippines are retaken by the Allies under the command of General MacArthur, paving the way for Japan's surrender.  But for MacArthur, victory over Japan is only a stepping-stone to greater glory: supreme rule over the conquered country and its eighty-three million inhabitants who, until then, were his blood enemies.  MacArthur enlists Captain Marsh to be his emissary to the imperial government, a mission that takes the junior officer into the shadow world of postwar Tokyo.  As Marsh undertakes the delicate task of opening a dialogue with the emperor, he becomes ensnared in a web of deceit, witnesses a grave injustice, commits a life-altering act of betrayal--and discovers shocking truths about MacArthur the world was never meant to know.
  
  Masterfully written and highly evocative, The Emperor's General is the story of MacArthur's bold and calculating transition from wartime general to "American Caesar," and of his enormous ego, his personal demons, and the glaring miscalculations he made in bargaining with the Japanese.  It is the story of Japan's dominant ruling class manipulating the American occupiers as they enter an arcane country whose rules and traditions have always baffled Westerners; of frantic scrambling on both sides to assign accountability for aggression and war crimes that approached those of the Nazis; and, in the person of narrator Jay Marsh, it is the all too human story of a young man's bitter coming of age--and of the conflicting demands of duty, honor, and love.
  
  From the battlefields and command posts of the Philippines to the royal palaces and geisha houses of Japan, The Emperor's General is an extraordinary saga of a spellbinding chapter in American history.

• Lost Soldiers (2002)
  Once in a great while there comes a novel of such emotional impact and acute insight that it forever changes the way a reader sees a nation or an era. Writing with an unerring sense of suspense and of history experienced firsthand, James Webb takes us on a myth-shattering cultural odyssey deep into the heart of contemporary Vietnam, with a riveting thriller that tells a love story — love for those who perished, for family and friends, and between a soldier and the land where he had always been ready to die.
  
  Brandon Condley survived five years of combat as a U.S. Marine only to lose the woman he loved to an enemy assassin. Now he is back in Vietnam, working to recover the remains of unknown American soldiers. On a routine mission, Condley finds a body that doesn’t match its dog tags — a body that propels him into a vortex of violence and intrigue where past and present become one.
  
  As the mystery of the dead man unravels, a link is revealed to two well-known killers: “Salt and Pepper,” a pair of treasonous Americans who led a deadly Viet Cong ambush against Condley’s own men. Galvanized by a fresh trail to these long-lost deserters, Condley has finally found a purpose: Under the auspices of his government job, he is going to hunt down the traitors. On his own, he is going to kill them.
  
  Condley’s hunt cannot be kept secret from his former enemies, or his friends. And in the shadows that linger from Vietnam’s long season of darkness and terror, he has no way of knowing which side is more dangerous.
  
  Surrounding him is an unforgettable cast of characters: Dzung, Condley’s closest friend, a South Vietnamese war hero who might have led his country if his side had won the war, now reduced to driving a cyclo as his family starves in Saigon’s District Four. Colonel Pham, a battle-hardened Viet Cong soldier who lost three children to American bombs. Manh, a cutthroat Interior Ministry official who blackmails Dzung into a mission of murder. The Russian soldier Anatolie Petrushinsky, who left his soul in Vietnam as his empire collapsed around him. And the beautiful Van, Colonel Pham’s daughter, who spurns the scars of war as she pursues her dreams of freedom.
  
  As Condley stalks his elusive prey across old battlefields and throughout Eurasia, returning always to the brooding streets of Saigon, his mission — and the odds of his surviving it — grow more precarious with each step he takes toward the truth.
  
  Lost Soldiers captures the Vietnam of past and present — its beauty and squalor, its politics and people. Propelled by a page-turning mystery, shot through with adventure and intrigue, it irrevocably transforms our view of that haunted land and brings us as complete an understanding as we will ever have of what happened after the war — and why. No writer today is more qualified to take us into that world than James Webb.

Non-fiction

• Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004)
  In his first work of nonfiction, bestselling novelist James Webb tells the epic story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose lives and worldview were dictated by resistance, conflict, and struggle, and who, in turn, profoundly influenced the social, political, and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through the present day.
  
  More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.
  
  Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the full journey of this remarkable cultural group, and the profound, but unrecognized, role it has played in the shaping of America. Written with the storytelling verve that has earned his works such acclaim as “captivating . . . unforgettable” (the Wall Street Journal on Lost Soliders), Scots-Irishman James Webb, Vietnam combat veteran and former Naval Secretary, traces the history of his people, beginning nearly two thousand years ago at Hadrian’s Wall, when the nation of Scotland was formed north of the Wall through armed conflict in contrast to England’s formation to the south through commerce and trade. Webb recounts the Scots’ odyssey—their clashes with the English in Scotland and then in Ulster, their retreat from one war-ravaged land to another. Through engrossing chronicles of the challenges the Scots-Irish faced, Webb vividly portrays how they developed the qualities that helped settle the American frontier and define the American character.
  
  Born Fighting shows that the Scots-Irish were 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston; they were the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain; and they have given America numerous great military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Audie Murphy, and George S. Patton, as well as most of the soldiers of the Confederacy (only 5 percent of whom owned slaves, and who fought against what they viewed as an invading army). It illustrates how the Scots-Irish redefined American politics, creating the populist movement and giving the country a dozen presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. And it explores how the Scots-Irish culture of isolation, hard luck, stubbornness, and mistrust of the nation’s elite formed and still dominates blue-collar America, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country music.
  
  Both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary America, Born Fighting reintroduces America to its most powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group—one too often ignored or taken for granted.
  
  
   

• See also other Politicians Who Write Fiction