A review by mburnamfink
The Best War Ever: America and World War II by Michael C.C. Adams

2.0

If you look for 'revisionist history' in the dictionary, you'll probably find this book. Adams goes at great length to penetrate the mystique of WW2, showing it as an ugly conflict where the average soldier lived in total terror, not knowing what he fought for, that made only half-hearted steps towards integrating American society, and helped destroy the social fabric of rural America. All of this may be true, and it serves as a nice counter-balance to the usual hagiographies, but as a whole this book exaggerates, elides, and is totally American centric. What about Germany, Russia, England, Japan, France, etc? (okay, it says that in the title, but really, those guys fought too). The home front stuff was alright for social history, but you might as well go to the way better primary source for the battles and read Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed.