Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.

This is a reissue of a modern classic. This book catapulted Norman Mailer to fame on its first publication in 1948. ''The best war novel to come out of the United States.'' - "The Times". This is Norman Mailer''s first novel. It is the book that catapulted him to instant fame. A modern classic, on every American Literature student''s reading list. Based on Mailer''s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, "The Naked and the Dead" is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare.