- It was the war to end all wars, the global struggle that would finally make the world safe for democracy - at any cost. But one American soldier has paid a price beyond measure. And within the disfigured flesh that was once a vision of youth lives a spirit that cannot accept what the world has become. An immediate bestseller upon its first publication in 1939, Trumbo"s stark, profoundly troubling masterpiece about the horrors of the First World War brilliantly crystallized the uncompromising brutality of war and became the most influential protest novel of the Vietnam era, as timely as ever.