The New York Times Book Review on The Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey

“Articulate and unsparing…[an] unforgettable account of how modern warfare both broadened and unsettled a young soldier.” Read more...

The Washington Post on Patrick Hennessey's "smart and funny" The Junior Officers' Reading Club

“The two books from which [The Junior Officers’ Reading Club] most directly draws inspiration are Michael Herr’s Dispatches,  the classic account (by a noncombatant!) of the Vietnam War, and Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, about the second Iraq campaign, and it deserves to be ranked with both of them. The Junior Officers’ Reading Club is a dark book at times, but it's also smart and funny. Hennessey’s account of his training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is absolutely delicious, self-mocking and irreverent.” More...

Entertainment Weekly on Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

“Norman Mailer once observed, somewhat ponderously, that boredom slays more of existence than war. But as the art of warfare has transformed from trenches and Maginot Lines to guerrilla terrorism and nation-building, a new strain of existentialism has emerged: the boredom of war. Patrick Hennessey, a captain in the British Army, captures that ennui perfectly in The Junior Officer's Reading Club.... Hennessey on the whole wields his words as impressively as he does his weapons." More...

Booklist says The Junior Officers' Reading Club "may be one of the best to come out of the war in Afghanistan"

Already hailed as a classic of war writing in the UK, where it was a bestseller, The Junior Officer’s Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey, available from Riverhead on September 7th, is a revelatory firsthand account of a young enlistee’s profound coming of age amid the frenetic violence, frequent boredom, and almost overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier’s experience the way we fight today. Booklist writes "All wars generate fine books. This may be one of the best to come out of Afghanistan."