Illegal Aliens

Nick Pollotta & Phil Foglio: Illegal Aliens (1989)

(This is repost from LJ)

Spherical alien ship lands on the Central Park of the NYC and teleports a group of test subjects inside to test their suitability to enter the Galactic League. Or that's what they say. The humans just happen to be a gang of street thugs. And the hilarity ensues.
( Not the kind of First Contact the SETI people would probably wish for )

Mindplayers

Pat Cadigan - Mindplayers

(This is repost from LJ, And this is just one of the first written by Queen of Cyberpunk)

Alexandra "Deadpan Allie" Haas, this world's equivalent to a drug junkie, is caught red-brained using an unlicensed psychosis and the Brain Police gives her a choice - train yourself to become a shrink or go to jail. So she goes to J. Walter Tech to become a professional.
( Cyberspace the psychiatrists' way )

Somebody Else's Kids

Torey Hayden - Somebody Else's Kids

(This is repost from LJ)

In this book Torey Hayden has officially lost her class to inclusion laws that force kids of special needs to go the classes with other children (that's sometime in the 1970's somewhere in the East Coast of USA, I presume, but could as well be Finland of the 1990s). First she does only some extra teaching but eventually Hayden ends up with a small, new class to call of her own. And in the process she ends up being accused of idealism more than once.
( Kids becoming Hayden's problem )

A War of Nerves

Ben Shephard - A War of Nerves

Warfare causes more than just physical wounds – but the mental side of the toll of war was really not studied for centuries (mainly because common soldiers were expendable anyway). So the study really started only around the World War One. Ben Shephard traces some of those developments, mostly based of Western European and US records.
( From shell shock to PTSD )

The Long Road Home

Ben Shephard - The Long Road Home

After World War Two ended, there were still lots of people who were not where they wanted to be, where they were supposed to be or were in a situation where they would still be killed in short order if they did not move.

( Post-WW2 refugee movements were bit bigger than the current ones )

Soldiers' Tale

Samuel Hynes - The Soldiers' Tale

This is a book about war narratives - not war as such. Even if Hynes wrote one himself.

( Did he study too few narratives? )