The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

by Studs Terkel

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Original Title: The Good War

ISBN: 1565843436
ISBN13: 9781565843431
Autor: Studs Terkel
Rating: 4.4 of 5 stars (4691) counts
Original Format: Paperback, 608 pages
Download Format: PDF, RTF, ePub, CHM, MP3.
Published: January 1st 1997 / by The New Press / (first published 1984)
Language: English
Genre(s):
History- 253 users
Nonfiction- 146 users
War- 42 users
War >World War II- 35 users

Description:

In The Good War Terkel presents the good, the bad, and the ugly memories of World War II from
a perspective of forty years of after the events. No matter how gruesome the memories are,
relatively few of the interviewees said they would have been better off without the experience. It
was a central and formative experience in their lives. Although 400,000 Americans perished, the
United States itself was not attacked again after Pearl Harbor, the economy grew, and there was a
new sense of world power that invigorated the country. Some women and African Americans
experienced new freedoms in the post war society, but good life after World War II was tarnished
by the threat of nuclear war.

About Author:

Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for "The Good War", and is best remembered for his
oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.
Terkel was acclaimed for his efforts to preserve American oral history. His 1985 book "The Good
War: An Oral History of World War Two", which detailed ordinary peoples' accounts of the
country's involvement in World War II, won the Pulitzer Prize. For "Hard Times: An Oral History of
the Great Depression", Terkel assembled recollections of the Great Depression that spanned the
socioeconomic spectrum, from Okies, through prison inmates, to the wealthy. His 1974 book,
"Working" also was highly acclaimed. In 1995, he received the Chicago History Museum "Making
History Award" for Distinction in Journalism and Communications. In 1997, Terkel was elected a
member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, he received the George
Polk Career Award in 1999.

Other Editions:
- The Good War: Oral History of WWII (Mass Market Paperback)

- The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (Kindle Edition)

- "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two (Hardcover)

- The Good War (Paperback)

- The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (Hardcover)

Books By Author:

- Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About
What They Do
 - Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

- Division Street: America

- Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American
Obsession

- Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a
Faith

Books In The Series:

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Rights Revolution

- The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45

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- Going Native

Rewiews:

Sep 02, 2013

Ensiform
Rated it: really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, war
A collection of reminisces and insights on the war. It's mostly American, but there are German,
Japanese and Russian voices as well. Even so, the years 1939-41 are almost totally ignored,
which is a surprising weakness is what is otherwise an immensely important book. The tales told
here present hundreds of horrifying, bizarre and amazing images that linger on later. Perhaps the
most memorable is the legless ex-GI, deformed from radiation and now become head of the
National Association of Atomic
A collection of reminisces and insights on the war. It's mostly American, but there are German,
Japanese and Russian voices as well. Even so, the years 1939-41 are almost totally ignored,
which is a surprising weakness is what is otherwise an immensely important book. The tales told
here present hundreds of horrifying, bizarre and amazing images that linger on later. Perhaps the
most memorable is the legless ex-GI, deformed from radiation and now become head of the
National Association of Atomic Veterans, recounting his warm welcome in Japan and his
treatments there, while the US government blocked all treatment at the VA hospital for fear of
admitting negligence. And still he spouts patriotic sentiment.
From the varied accounts the bombers and the bombed, the journalists and grunts and top brass
four main themes emerge. The first is how utterly naive, with the exceptions of a few so-called
Premature Anti-Fascists, Americans were in 1941. A war was going on and almost all of them
ignored its progress, ignored the likelihood of attack. The second is the attitudes Americans had
after the war: prosperity became a right, and confidence was very high, among women and blacks
as well as veterans. The third is the pervasive and deep racism of the Army and the U.S.
Apparently white GIs told the English that blacks had tails. Blacks were shot and hanged by white
soldiers. And they were fighting fascism! The fourth theme is the distrust that Americans came to
feel for their government. Vietnam is mentioned again and again; the Russians as allies-to-
enemies is cited. And, since the book was compiled the '80s, there is a palpable sense of fatalism
in many of the stories: a feeling the bomb can drop any moment. Another WWII legacy.
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