The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History

Mailer's nonfiction narrative of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, told in the third person as the comic-heroic adventures of 'Mailer.' Published 6 May 1968, twenty years to the day after The Naked and the Dead; winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. A landmark of the New Journalism.

The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (New York: New American Library, 6 May 1968; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, October 1968; nonfiction narrative, 317 pp., $5.95) is Mailer’s account of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which he took part and was arrested. Its formal daring — narrating Mailer’s own conduct in the third person, as “Mailer,” a comic and self-deflating protagonist, and dividing the book into “History as a Novel” and “The Novel as History” — made it the central text of the New Journalism and the high point of Mailer’s nonfiction.

It was published on 6 May 1968, twenty years to the day after The Naked and the Dead (48.2). The dedication reads: “To Beverly; An acknowledgment to Sandy Charlebois for work beyond the call of duty.” Discarded titles included “Bust at the Pentagon” and “The Armies of the Dead.”

Mailer characterized the book’s tone: “There is no sex [in The Armies of the Night]. In that sense, it’s a nineteenth-century novel. It’s courtly, it’s deliberate, it’s amused with its time and place… I suppose it has the restrained merriment of the early nineteenth-century picaresque novel” (82.16).

Magazine origins

The entire narrative appeared first in two parts: as “The Steps of the Pentagon” (68.2, Harper’s, March 1968 — then the longest article in the magazine’s history and in U.S. journalism to that date) and as “The Battle of the Pentagon” (68.6, Commentary, April 1968). Mailer then revised both for book publication, where they became Book One (“History as a Novel: The Steps of the Pentagon”) and Book Two (“The Novel as History: The Battle of the Pentagon”). For the editor of Harper’s’s own account of the work’s genesis, see Willie Morris, New York Days (1993), 213–22.

Prizes and standing

The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters, and (in 1969) the George Polk Memorial Award for magazine reporting. In 1999 it was ranked nineteenth on New York University’s list of the top 100 works of twentieth-century American journalism. The full reception — the major reviews, the prizes, and the critical afterlife — is gathered on the companion page reception and prizes.

Reprintings

Partial in The Time of Our Time (98.7).

Related pages

• 1968 | New American Library
• The Steps of the Pentagon | The Battle of the Pentagon | reception and prizes
• The Naked and the Dead | Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
• When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, It's Norman Mailer (68.26) | Norman Mailer Wins an Award (69.3) | The Book Industry Presents the 20th National Book Awards (69.4) | Mailer the Author Will Donate Prize to Mailer the Politician (69.25) | On Accepting the Pulitzer Prize (69.26) | Mailer Starts Term in Jail, Labels Nixon 'Uriah Heep' (70.8) | The Nonviolent Norman Mailer (70.11) | Existential Errands (72.7) | Letter to John Hohenberg (74.20) | The Executioner's Song (79.14) | Searching for Deliverance (96.5)
• Pieces and Pontifications (82.16) | The Time of Our Time (98.7)

First published: 1968-05-06
Form: nonfiction-narrative
Lennon & Lennon: 68.8
Cite as: /works/1968-armies-of-the-night
Last updated: 2026-06-18