Book Description
"In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of
France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the
fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied
invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of
Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. There, I underwent a
life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the
American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men
in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their
stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all
they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for
the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had
come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to
history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any
society has ever produced."
In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to
tell through the stories of individual men and women the
story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines
who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second
World War and went on to build modern America. This
generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also
by common values-duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love
of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for
oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday
lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and
were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting
and useful lives and the America we have today.
"At a time in their lives when their days and nights
should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and
the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the
most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied
landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral
islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the
world from the two most powerful and ruthless military
machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands
of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start,
but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They
won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous
and short-lived celebrations and immediately began the task
of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They
married in record numbers and gave birth to another
distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation
made it possible for more of them to attend college than any
society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new
science, literature, art, industry, and economic strength
unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach
the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they
remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so
many stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have
never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think
that what they were doing was that special, because everyone
else was doing it too.
"This book, I hope, will in some small way pay
tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we
have today--an American family portrait album of the greatest
generation."
In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder,
who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the
middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic
and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk
about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his
assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under
him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be
compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about
life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel
Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who
found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result
of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black
women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the
members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out),
friends for life.
Through these and other stories in The Greatest
Generation, you'll relive with ordinary men and women,
military heroes, famous people of great achievement, and
community leaders how these extraordinary times forged the
values and provided the training that made a people and a
nation great.
