Rating: 
Summary: pure greatness
Review: this is one of the best satire books you will ever read, the book is funny as hell to. many people can't get past the first page of the book just because they don't understand it. if you like satires this book should definetly be on your list to read.
Rating: 
Summary: What is tragic is absurd, what is absurd is funny
Review: War is a summary of all possible tragic events. Here the main character, Yossarian, is someone who recognizes that absurdity has become a way of life for a world were logic reasoning has been twisted to support a group of persons who could not care less about their fellow beings.The problem for someone, as him, who suddenly becomes "enlightened" is that he can no longer be understood. Besides he can no longer be in communion with life as it was before. From that perspective everything that occurs becomes absurd, and what is absurd is usually funny. Here is the strength of the book, it proves that once you can laugh about the situations you are living, you are in control of your life andabove those persons who try to keep you under their grip.
Rating:
Summary: Sublime
Review: Fantastic. A quirky and off-the-wall read. Admittedly, the style took a little while to get used to, and I put it down a few times in the past until I had the patience to become accustomed to the stream of consciousness nature. Once I actually hunkered down and got into the book, though, I was completely rewarded. I have read no other book quite like this, which I mean in the best possible way. Don't expect to necessarily retain much by way of a plot, or to remember all of the myriad of characters that appear. Do prepare to be thoroughly entertained, however. The book is completely unique and hilarious, and is prophetic in the sense that its humor still applies to readers today, some 40+ years later.
Rating:
Summary: A BOOK LIKE NO OTHER
Review: Catch-22 is an american masterpeice. It really can not be characterized under any descriptions a mind can muster. It is a true masterpiece that deserves a read even if you are the most fanatical advocate of war. it is long, but when its over you will be wishing for 450 more pages to spend with yossarian and the rest of the group
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant work of satirical humor
Review: I would first like to inform other reviewers that I am a high school junior, read this as part of a choice novel project, and had no trouble grasping the ideas that Joseph Heller presented within his Catch-22. The sarcastic attitude of this novel is conspicuous, and all bonds with reality are dropped with the first character introductions. The humor that has previously been criticized I found to be easy to understand, not monotonous, and a unique aspect to illustrate WW2. This is not to say the humor is for all, because Heller uses many paradoxes (look up definition of "catch-22"), simple one line contradictions, and subtle word choices to draw a laugh-all which represent the personality of the novel. Yes, there are many characters, probably over fifty, yet grasping the names is not important at all times. Of course you quickly get associated with Yossarian and the other main characters, and chapters do reintroduce people from the early parts of the book. This may be annoying, yet each character is distinct, and there is little chance of confusing Milo, and entrepeneur, with Havermeyer, the elite pilot. In truth, the novel lacks a linear time, but chooses, rather, to define the novel through numerous character sketches, focusing them loosely around Yossarian. By the later chapters of the novel, Heller subtly introduces the gruesome truths of the war, balancing the early humor with more realistic look. It is through this transition that the weight of the situation is elucidated, and by contrasting the final chapters with the first, Heller is able to attract our attention and force us to analyze the war. What is the novel about? There is no simple answer, yet if I attempt to state it in a single sentence Catch-22's theme, it would be "The only true fault of America's once the war began, was that we as a nation began to glorify war, without truly understanding the implications of our actions." What is the idea behind catch-22 as a statement? Read the book. Enjoy. Open your eyes with laughter and tears. Perhaps you won't like the satirical tone, but I would suggest to all that you try.
Rating:
Summary: Indignant, funny, but not for everybody.
Review: I don't know what it is that separates people who love Catch-22 from those who can't get past page one. It may have something to do with the indignant, satirical energy that the book explodes with, or with the sheer unorthodoxy of the mechanics of the writing itself. Regardless, this is a novel I have revisted time and again, alternantely finding comfort that there may be a way to short circuit the madness that is my life, and sharing Yossarian's exasperation with the unnecessary indignities and difficulties of life. In laughing at Catch-22 we laugh at ourselves and our lives, and although few of us have experienced WWII from a bombardier's eye view, we have all experienced Yossarian, Major Major, R. O. Shipman, Dunbar, and everyone else in or even remotely connected with the 256th squadron. Sometimes the cosmos laugh. Clearly Mr. Heller heard them.
Rating:
Summary: 10 Stars+ If There is Such a Rating Scale
Review: I read this book twice this year, upon purchase from my college book store. It has become my favorite book since, and my "guide" and companion. I have read critical essays on this book, and have had time to contemplate it. Yes, I agree that the book is "anti-war" and at times, "incoherent."</p> However, it wasn't so much "anti-war" as it was anti-establishment.(Many of the readers will recall the unforgettable villains such as--many of them, caricatures representing the inherent flaws of the war establishment-- Milo Minderbinder, Generals Peckem and Scheisskopf, Lt. Col Korn, Col. Cathcart, Capt. Black , ex-PFC Wintergreen, Cpl Whitcomb.) And if it had been "incoherent" and "disorganized," it was because the author had deliberately planned the story to capture the absurdity and irrational logic of the establishment. In the midst of the corrupt and at times, inept corporate/military machine is our hero, Yossarian, and his squadronmates who are pitted in a struggle against the horror of war, and their own self-serving superiors and bureaucrats and an entrepreneur whose only collective interest is to enlarge their fold at the expense of human lives.</p> Unlike many other books that have clumsily tried to emulate its inimitable style since its publication,--Winston Groom's FORREST GUMP comes to my mind--CATCH-22 balances exceptional hillarity with a biting warning against the absurd totalian logic of the system we often take for granted.</p> Moreover, it gives us hope through Yossarian's--and perhaps, Orr's--final triumph against the Milo-Cathcart-Korn-Wintergreen Axis when they tried to subvert him in his weakest moment. Where George Orwell depressed his readers with the capitulation of Winston Smith to Big Brother/O'Brien in his 1984, Heller's main message in the book --that one can triumph against the establishment if he has the courage--offered me hopes.</p> That is why it will always remain my favorite book. I cannot praise this companion/guide enough. (Novelist and former Secretary of the Navy, James Webb called this book his "soulmate" on the battlefields of Vietnam.) But I will say this. That if there been a rating scale of 10 stars, then I will give it 10 stars+.</p>
Rating:
Summary: comes together as it goes.
Review: As I started to read this novel I was immediately overwhelmed with the persistence of new characters. But as I started to learn the little niches and such that I could attach to each of the characters it made it much easier to follow, and thus allowed you, by the end of the book, to really piece together the whole meaning of the book and sit back and really take in what Heller tried to give to his reader when he wrote it. And that is a feeling of utter dismay for all that has been thought to be of benefit to a military force; the unquestioned following of leadership, cold and detached attitude towards a human, and a bigger than thou regard for the rules that everyday citizens are expected to play by and keep in mind when they interact and function together.
Rating:
Summary: review the reviewers
Review: I was looking at the past reviews of this book, interested to see the expected raves but more interesting was the critics of this book, yes it is anti war..but in a tongue in cheek way a soldier would see war. The politics that send him to fight another are soon forgotten in a battle or the bordom of a war... he will hate his leaders who are keeping him away from his loved ones, soldiers in a drawn out war loose the first excitment of this adventure, they see dead and the horrors of war. The characters who are tied up in this insanity see nothing of the big picture, only their daily dramas, they have the right to think all is insane.So this book reflects this, it shows how us normal people survive in a very unusual situation.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites.
Review: I read this during the mid-70s while stationed in Germany with the US Army. Yes, I know. Serving with a peacetime army in no way compares with fighting in World War Two. Nevertheless, I identified with what Heller had to say almost immediately. His descriptions of the military way of doing things rang true. I practically rolled with laughter from the first page to the end. I'll admit this: Catch 22 would have made no sense to me had I not had a prolonged day-to-day experience with the military.
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