Hardcover, 589 pages
English language
Published October 1984 by Pantheon.
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"The Good War" is Studs Terkel's most exciting, most popular, and most moving book, an account of the lives of ordinary Americans, at home and abroad, during World War Two. With his customary genius for finding the unexpected and the telling. Terkel presents men and women re- calling the time when they were all of eighteen and nineteen, thrown into the Far Pacific or confronting the Germans in the last, vicious battles of the European campaign. Here are the moving and unforgettable accounts of one of the Andrews Sisters visiting a military hospital, of a young man recalling the terror General Patton struck into the hearts of so many, of a black soldier recounting the racial battles and killings among the Americans, of the GI who was among the first to liberate the concentration camps. Here too are those who stayed at home: the relief workers, the big shots in …
"The Good War" is Studs Terkel's most exciting, most popular, and most moving book, an account of the lives of ordinary Americans, at home and abroad, during World War Two. With his customary genius for finding the unexpected and the telling. Terkel presents men and women re- calling the time when they were all of eighteen and nineteen, thrown into the Far Pacific or confronting the Germans in the last, vicious battles of the European campaign. Here are the moving and unforgettable accounts of one of the Andrews Sisters visiting a military hospital, of a young man recalling the terror General Patton struck into the hearts of so many, of a black soldier recounting the racial battles and killings among the Americans, of the GI who was among the first to liberate the concentration camps. Here too are those who stayed at home: the relief workers, the big shots in Washington, the small businessmen making unexpected fortunes, the young women surrounded by a sudden supply of young men and romance. And here are accounts of the panic that struck the West Coast on the first nights following Pearl Harbor-something that historians have yet to record-and the full story of the bomb, told by the scientists who developed it and the pilot who flew the plane over Nagasaki.
"The Good War" includes the memories. of some of the famous: the admirals, the politicians, the intellectuals, ranging from Averell Harriman to John Kenneth Galbraith. Equally fascinating are the views of those who formed our image of the war, from Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist, to Milt Caniff, creator of the vastly popular Terry and the Pirates.
To complement this vast array, Terkel has spoken to a number of those who experienced the war in Japan, in Russia, in Germany, England, and France. He shows us the other side of the war, those who were bombed as well as those who did the bombing.
The result is a rich, vibrant canvas, an epic of nearly Tolstoyan dimensions, bringing vividly to life the ideals and the innocence that made this our "good war."