The book has been hailed as the best book from WWII. I don‘t get it. Was pretty good for the first 600 pages, but… the ending left me disappointed. After writing for 600+ pages Mailer didn‘t conclude his book so much as he stopped writing. The deus ex machina end to the patrol was right out of a high school writing assignment. I expected so much more from this book. It was for me the literary equivalent of overwrought empty calories.