A review by desertjarhead505
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns

5.0

Wonderfully done - informative, sometimes heartbreaking. The companion to the Ken Burns video documentary, which is every bit as good as the one he made on the Civil War almost a generation ago. As the title indicates, and like that earlier work, this tells the story of the war primarily from the point of view of the ordinary men and women who served in it and their families rather than of the heads of state, generals, and admirals on whom histories have more often focused. In this case, unlike what was possible for The Civil War, the story is enriched by extensive interviews with surviving participants, where the passage of time left only letters and photographs for the earlier war. This is somewhat in the philosophical tradition of Studs Terkel's "The Good War," and like that book, it presents the war as necessary while emphatically putting the quotation marks around "Good War" by showing the tragedy and brutality of it and making the point that there has never been a good war, although there have been wars like this one that were necessary and were the least of the available evils.

I can't recommend this book and the documentary it accompanies strongly enough for anyone who wants to understand the most influential period of the 20th century for this country, and that should include all of us. If more history was presented this way, more people would take an interest in it, and we wouldn't live in a culture where more young people know who Madonna is than know whose side we were on in this war.