"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.
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