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(the Good War÷: An Oral History Of World War Ii

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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 and
Working. This is a must for anyone's World War II bookshelf.
Don't give it away no matter what. Keep it under lock and key
because it's so precious. If you read only one book on World
War 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 lost
resource.

"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.

Studs Terkel's "The Good War" presented World War II as told by those who lived it. It appears that Terkel rounded up all the living legends that helped popularize the war effort, and have become somewhat iconiclastic heroes to American society. You've got the "gung ho" E.B. (Slegdehammer)Sledge who led the men of company K through the jungles of the Pacific, and of course, the Rosie the riveters who epitomized the working woman with their dungerees and working man boots. And ironically, Terkel also included the voices of dissent who had no sense of humanity and sided with the "other" side, that is, fascism, as a result of fear. The personal account by Erich Luth presents how war and the effects of war can have a major impact on an individual. Things can change in the process, and unfortunately, it was only through devastation that a person realized how wrong they had been to support a tyrranical form of government and leader, which existed with the Hitler regime. As Luth states: "You see, I belong to nation which has always been rich in military heroes, but is underdeveloped in civil courage...The young are beginning to understand" (433).

If history teaches anything, it teaches us to understand how people experienced hardships and also successes. These individuals survived and they had the courage to tell their stories. From scientists to the boy or girl next door, these people are Americans who participated in a society that combated the enemy from the Pacific and the Atlantic.

Terkel presented a variety of voices in "The Good War", and many great anecdotes and memoirs as told by these voices. It also asks the question if World War II had been romanticized as the "good war" or was it something more? All I can say is that this book is definitely worth reading in spite of the fact that much of the stories and eye-witness accounts bear much significance to yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This is a book about humanity and learning from what has been learned before.

This is an interesting volume of many, many people's personal experiences during the war. The narrative is not exactly gripping, but with patience it can be rewarding. If you're interested in little tid bits of people's memories and brief summaries of their life during the war, this book might be helpful. Though, this book did not meet my expectations based on the glowing reviews given here. I thought it would be more interesting and more in-depth. Many parts are quite boring.

Studs Terkel's Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Good War" is an amazing and startling history of the World War II. It gathers hundreds of interviews from all walks of life talking about their experiences in "the good war." It was a required reading for History 417 "United States History in Crisis 1917-1945" at Indiana State University. The book painted a genuine picture of the Second World War and put in plain words from individual experiences. The experiences of panic in Americans in the West Coast, radios announcing false reports of Japanese air attacks, and random shooting in the sky. The young American boys were turning in to savages in the Pacific campaign against a foe that had a code of honor. "Rosie" women working in the plants to help the war effect, never thought that the bombshells they were making was killing people. The book is an excellent choice, if you want to know what people thought about the war in the 1980s. My suggestions are to read the stories about John Garcia (a 16-year old Hawaiian living on Pearl harbor and joined the Army), Peggy Terry, Ray Wax and so many others stories.

To present multiple views of World War 2, Terkel has recorded the words of gung ho enlisted men, army nurses, mothers of soldiers, USO volunteers, officers, war scientists, conscientious objectors, the wounded and embittered, the children of those who served, survivors of Nazi cruelty, Germans, Japanese, and Americans of all races.

It is an amazingly emotionally moving oral history. Because the reader is confronted with the words of real people, the book becomes a very personal experience. Some of the combat tales are as horrific as any from the war in Viet Nam. Likewise, the bureaucratic nonsense, the prejudice, the loss of life, the cruelty, the simple acts of heroism and sacrifice. Enormously poignant at times; often humorous, sometimes devastatingly sad, always gripping.

I am not much of a history buff, and perhaps this is the best level of historical writing for me, so I would recommend this to anyone who has even the slightest interest in what Americans were doing during that war.

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.

When I realized this book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1985 I decided to read it, since I am sort of trying to read all the Pulitzer prize winners. I had been somewhat put off by the idea of an oral history. But the minute I started on the book I found it very readable and the accounts absorbing. True, some of the interviewees said things that were disagreeable or dumb, but all were interesting to read. I find I like hearing about what experience one had in the war, and this book has such accounts of over 100 people, some quite famous, and others unknown. Some of the persons exhibited a bitter or cynical attitude, which might have been different if the interviews had been taken after the Cold War ended, but I suppose if they had been taken after Sept 11 a new note of pessimism would have been apparent. Reading this book raised to 20 the number of General Non-Fiction Pulitzer prize winners I have read, but there are 23 I have not read. I am glad this book won a Pulitzer prize, else I never would have read it.

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.

Studs Terkel is one of the most interesting journalists I have ever read. I picked up this book for my college US History class and I read far more entries than the ones assigned to us. Getting a clear picture of World War II is very difficult, especially given the nature of primary sources (like film reels advocating women to go to work, or whatever) which assert that the War was indisputably the "Good War." Through Terkel's book I have learned that WWII was much more complicated than a simple event of unity across the country. Making it work required a number of battles, and not every American citizen benefited from the events of the war. Terkel's striking vignettes provide a myriad fascinating perspectives from people affected by WWII in so many ways, and within each interview he finds a nugget of evidence that enhances (or sometimes redefines) history.