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A review by steelcitygator
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
2.0
A companion piece to the documentary, ultimately, I've read this exact same book done better before.
The idea of using first hand accounts to craft the story of the American war effort in the second world war. Covering the air war, East, West, naval, ground, homefront, all of it. In that I think it does a good job of covering all the necessary aspects. But Burns and Ward don't just rely on their interviews and letters of the highlighted people standing in to lead us through the story, they also utilize some rather famous accounts such as excerpts from Eugene Sledge.
The variety of voices, including minorities and women, is a plus. As well as some interesting techniques such as using one of the towns they spotlight's newspaper as excerpts to show how some of this personalized reporting was done at home. This is something not necessarily touched on a ton and nice to see.
But, overall, it's a book I've seen done before and often in a more interesting way and with more unique takes/sets of people followed. It feels very cookie cutter way of doing this. I always appreciate the collecting of each person's war, the value of which can only help us in time, but I don't think this is really something anyone needs to seek out for their WW2 collection.
The idea of using first hand accounts to craft the story of the American war effort in the second world war. Covering the air war, East, West, naval, ground, homefront, all of it. In that I think it does a good job of covering all the necessary aspects. But Burns and Ward don't just rely on their interviews and letters of the highlighted people standing in to lead us through the story, they also utilize some rather famous accounts such as excerpts from Eugene Sledge.
The variety of voices, including minorities and women, is a plus. As well as some interesting techniques such as using one of the towns they spotlight's newspaper as excerpts to show how some of this personalized reporting was done at home. This is something not necessarily touched on a ton and nice to see.
But, overall, it's a book I've seen done before and often in a more interesting way and with more unique takes/sets of people followed. It feels very cookie cutter way of doing this. I always appreciate the collecting of each person's war, the value of which can only help us in time, but I don't think this is really something anyone needs to seek out for their WW2 collection.