The Best War Ever: America and World War II

by Adams, Michael C. C.

• ISBN13: 9780801846977
• ISBN10: 0801846978
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-01-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Was it really such a "good war"? It was, if popular memory is to be trusted. We knew who the enemy was. We knew what we were fighting for. The war was good for the economy. It was liberating for women. It was a war of tanks and airplanes -- a cleaner war than World War I. Americans were united. Soldiers were proud. It was a time of prosperity, sound morality, and power.But according to historian Michael Adams, our memory is distorted, and it has left us with a misleading -- even dangerous -- legacy. Challenging many of our common assumptions about the period, Adams argues that our experience of World War II was positive but also disturbing, creating problems that continue to plague us today.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps
Editor's Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Mythmaking and the War	p. 1
No Easy Answers	p. 20
The Patterns of War, 1939-1945	p. 43
The American War Machine	p. 69
Overseas	p. 91
Home Front Change	p. 114
A New World	p. 136
Afterword	p. 156
Bibliographical Essay	p. 161
Index	p. 185
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