Matterhorn is on track to be one of the classic books about men and warfare. An autobiographical account of battle by decorated Marine, Matterhorn reveals the essence of the war in Vietnam, the lies that men die for, and the truth that can be found at the limits of mortality.

Matterhorn is a code name for a mountain right at the border of North Vietnam and Laos, an isolated outpost far beyond Khe Sanh. Lt. Mellas is a green officer, trying to navigate the struggles of command and keep his men alive. Against life, he has the implacable jungle, the rigors of patrolling, a racially divided unit, the skilled enemy of the NVA, and above all a high command obsessed with looking good in the stats back home, willing to spend the lives of Mellas and his men for nothing at all. The blind brute stupidity of high command, their inability to understand how hard it is to move in the jungle and hills, to deliver supplies, let alone justice, comes through again and again.

Marlantes plays his book straight, drawing from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and the epic chivalric poem Parzival, rather than the fragmented, post-modern school. It works, it's entirely authentic, it goes beyond the strict limits of temporal order and a single point of view of the memoir to strive towards mythic resonance. Marlantes elegantly captures the strain of humping through the jungle, the human universe of an infantry unit, the terror and liberation and uncertainty of battle.

Take it from a guy who reads a lot of these books, Matterhorn is in the top tier.