War of the Encyclopaedists

War of the Encyclopaedists follows two friends in their mid-twenties: Mickey Montauk, a National Guard officer deployed to Baghdad during the Iraq War, and Halifax Corderoy, who enters a graduate program at Boston University. The friends maintain their connection by editing a shared Wikipedia page, their primary link across the geographic and experiential divide between civilian and military life. Their story takes place in 2004, as both navigate dramatic changes in their trajectories - from carefree Seattle hipsters to their respective roles in academia and war. The novel draws from the authors' own experiences - Kovite served in Baghdad during the Iraq War, while Robinson pursued a career in poetry. Together they crafted this dual narrative over four years of collaboration. At its core, the book explores how friendship persists through radical life changes, and examines the gap between intellectual understanding and lived experience during wartime. The narrative structure mirrors the fragmented, collaborative nature of both modern warfare and digital communication.

Readers found this novel captured the millennial experience of early-2000s America through its portrayal of friendship, war, and coming-of-age themes. Liked: - Authentic depiction of military service and deployment - Wikipedia article motif works as narrative device - Complex friendship between main characters - Mix of humor and serious themes Disliked: - Multiple narrators and timeline shifts confused some readers - Female characters lack depth - Some found the protagonists unlikeable or pretentious - Pacing issues in middle section Ratings: Goodreads: 3.5/5 (1,200+ ratings) Amazon: 4/5 (80+ reviews) Notable reader comments: "Perfectly captures that post-college uncertainty" - Goodreads reviewer "Military scenes feel lived rather than researched" - Amazon reviewer "Too self-conscious in its attempts to be literary" - LibraryThing review "The Wikipedia entries between chapters are clever but sometimes interrupt flow" - Goodreads reviewer

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🔹 The novel was co-written by its authors in an unconventional way, with Robinson and Kovite passing chapters back and forth via email while living on opposite coasts. 🔹 The book's Wikipedia-editing plot element was inspired by the authors' real-life experience of maintaining their own collaborative Wikipedia page before it was deleted for not meeting notability guidelines. 🔹 Author Gavin Kovite served as an infantry platoon leader in Baghdad during the same period (2004) depicted in the novel, bringing firsthand experience to the military sequences. 🔹 The term "Encyclopaedists" in the title references both Wikipedia and Denis Diderot's 18th-century Encyclopédie project, which similarly aimed to collect and organize human knowledge. 🔹 The novel began as a short story written by Robinson, which he expanded into a full manuscript after meeting Kovite at a writing workshop in 2009.