Product Description

With an unequalled ear for the voices of ordinary Americans, Terkel dramatically yet intimately captures the responses to the war from sea-plane pilots and Chicago street kids to journalists, architects, a mountain woman, policemen, film makers, a paper-mill worker, cabdrivers and a host of others. 'Deeply moving and profoundly important' Alan Brinkley, Boston Globe

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #896665 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

From the Publisher
Simon Schama explains why this is one of his favourites...
Terkel’s riveting books are history raw (rather than cooked) the spoken voices, sharp and unsentimental, quite unclouded by the vapours of epic self-aggrandisement or the bitters of cynicism.

This one is the perfect antidote to military heroics. "World War II for me is a sore asshole" says Eddie Costello the seaplane pilot and bomber "four years of nervous diarrhoea".

Terkel is in no doubt of the ultimate goodness of this particular war but he’s equally undeluded by nostalgia. Reading the book is like wandering into the reunion from hell - but you’re glad you’ve come all the same. Otherwise you’d never have met E.B. "Sledgehammer" Sledge, who owns up to knocking off wounded Japanese to knock out their gold teeth, but who reads Wilfred Owen in the foxholes of Okinawa, or Ray Wax, infantryman and showman, part Mailer, part Minderbinder, who builds Patton’s Third a movie theatre "I went to my drunken colonel who was marvellous and asked him for a two and a half ton truck. The army always said, Never volunteer. F**k ‘em. I always volunteered. He gave me the truck and I carried these six sections of prefabricated flooring. Everywhere I went I could drop down and I had a stage. I put that stage all across France. I put on Dinah Shore. I put on Bing Crosby.."

About the Author
Pulitzer Prize-winner Studs Terkel was born in 1912 and grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932 and from Chicago Law School in 1934. He has been an actor in radio soap operas, a disk jockey, a sports commentator, a television master of ceremonies, and a radio host. He has travelled all over the world doing on-the-spot interviews. He still broadcasts daily in Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Meet all kinds of people who had the courage to be honest.
This book helped me understand myself and my parents' generation in ways I never considered possible. Reading it was like taking a guided tour through the no-man's-land between idealism and despair. I'm no great history book fan, but I'd definitely recommend this one to readers of every age, nationality, and background. You will not be disappointed.

A series of short true stories of WWII
I found this easy to read. The book presented many aspects of the time. Some peoples accounts of famous events like Pearl Harbour were fresh and relevant. Don't expect a balanced view of the war nor the truth. What you do get is tales as interesting for what they leave out as put in. The book opens very much in the style of Saving Private Ryan with stories of bullets, bombs and carnage. There are definite themes such as treatment of the American-Japanese community on the home front, the Afro-American troops story, Women and the war and the Atomic bomb and it's impact and effects. The book never concludes anything though there is a narrator prescence here and there in the pages. The analysis of these oral histories is for the reader. I found it showed how tough the human condition is. On the whole most participants in the war felt the A-bomb should have been dropped. Only japanese felt otherwise ! The turn around in foreign policy from Russia as an Allie to enemy No.1 was also quite noticeable. The relatively lenient treatment of the Germans involved in war crimes was also highlighted for me. It's a bit like the freeing of terrorist prisoners here and in Northern Ireland under the Good Friday Peace Agreement. My main hope is that there is a good peace now 'The Troubles' are ended.

This book really opens up your eyes
This book really stands on its head any conventional idea of the Second World War as a simple struggle of good against evil. The firsthand perspectives presented here (and their juxtoposition) instead present a very morally ambiguous war. This is a gripping and at times troubling read.