"The Good War" - An Oral History of World War II

The above quotation was on the quote page of Studs Terkel's 1984 book "The Good War." "The Good War" is an oral history of World War II. That's something Mr. Terkel excels at. His other oral histories include Hard Times andWorking. This is a must for anyone's World War II bookshelf.Don't give it away no matter what. Keep it under lock and keybecause it's so precious. If you read only one book on WorldWar II, make it this one. Unlike Band of Brothers, which is about a company in a regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, this book wasn't made into an HBO miniseries. Buy it now. There are fewer World War II veterans now than there were twenty years ago. Once they're all dead, it's a lostresource.

"The Good War" has had a profound on my perspective of history. I have always been a fascinated student of World War II, but Terkel's masterpiece led me to completely re-evaluate how I viewed the Second World War. The book is somewhat deceiving because while it seems light, it is the exact opposite. Many of the accounts given by the men and women affected by the war are extremely powerful, and it is difficult to read through many of them in a row without having to stop and ponder their implications.There is no doubt Terkel wrote this book to push his support of pacifism. While he probably edited the accounts to make his message more pointed, it does not really matter. Yes, World War II was "good" in that it was necessary to stop the Nazi war machine. But it was not "good" because no war can be good. World War II is often portrayed as this great event, but Terkel reveals the War for what it really was: vital for the future of the world, but devastating to millions whose lives were transformed by it. "The Good War" is a lot of like "Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley. It is shows the amazing heroism displayed by people during the War, but at the same time vividly illustrates the horrors sometimes forgotten when people think about World War II. Make no mistake: I agree that the heroism of our vets during the war is unparalleled in history. I just think the book gives an important perspective that should not be ignored. If you want to gain a new perspective of what many call the "good war" I highly recommend Studs Terkels' powerful book.

Once I picked up this amazing collection of first-hand narratives, I literally could not put it down. Every story is touching; every story has a lesson to be learned. It shows WWII from many different angles: the soldier, the wife who lost everything in the present but gained a future, the daughter who promised herself to every soldier she saw; the bombed, the bomber, the black men fighting segregation. Studs Terkel did a brilliant job in allowing people to reveal their deepest secrets and hidden passions.

Studs Terkel's book was on my shelves for many years, and I've basically ignored it for all that time. But when it was time to pick a new book to read from my library, I saw it sitting there - and in light of the events of September 11, it somehow seemed that this was the perfect time to read this book, and that this was the perfect book for the time.For this book, Terkel interviewed men and women from all walks of life, and from both sides of the war, in order to paint as complete a picture of that time as possible. He has more than succeeded. Some of his interviewees were for the war; a few were against it, even when they were in the thick of it. Some told of the injustices done to Japanese-Americans, and some told of what they found when they arrived at the gates of Buchenwald.Each man and woman has their own story to tell, and Terkel lets them tell it in their own voice. The grammar, syntax, etc. varies from person to person, told exactly as Terkel recorded it. There are some accounts from famous people (John Kenneth Galbraith, Mike Royko, and Maxine Andrews, to name a few), but most of the stories are told by the so-called common people. And even those people whose names are known outside of this book don't put on any airs when they allow Terkel to record them.That single fact makes this the best book on or about any war that I've ever read - beyond even such admitted classics as "From Here to Eternity", "The 13th Valley", and "Battle Cry". Those books, and many others like them, are very good - but the people in them are all larger than life. You don't get that impression reading these accounts.Kudos to Studs Terkel for preserving these stories and letting us see the real face of World War II.