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 The Nation
 The grand old man of American letters Norman Mailer, known for his anti-war activism, died of acute renal failure on Saturday aged 84. In his extensive collection of novels and essays, Mailer wrote about the politics of his day. One of his best known books is “The Naked and the Dead” set in the Pacific during the Second World War and inspired by his experiences as a soldier. That work led him to be hailed as a new Hemingway. His 1968 account of a peace march on the Pentagon, “Armies of the Night”, won him a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. Mailer was also a regular critic of US President George W Bush and especially the Iraq War.