Modern Library: The Red Badge Of Courage

First published in 1895, one of America's greatest novel of the Civil War was written before 21-year-old Stephen Crane had smelled even the powder of a sham bottle. But this powerful psychological study of a young soldier's struggle with the horrors, both within and without, that war strikes the reader with its undeniable realism and with its masterful descriptions of the moment-by-moment riot of emotions felt by me under fire.

This ironic portrayal of an episode of war so intense, so immediate, so real, that the terror of battle becomes our own.