Book Review: Greatest Generation

The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Rating this, a collection of short narratives, almost bios, of people in WWII, is difficult because of one thing: its writer.

While I found some of the information about their life stories and experiences interesting, all was told by, and very much in the voice of, Tom Brokaw.

The tone throughout was heavy, leaden with the preachy tone of an old man witnessing kids ringing doorbells and running away on the night before Halloween. He repeated how the generation of his focus was the exceptional in its discretion and moral fiber – so much so that it overtook the stories completely.

The stories were not well written: point of view would slide into Brokaw’s own experiences, right in the middle of someone else’s story; the writing was surprisingly stiff and choppy. And those constant references to how great this generation was (and, implicitly how great all others were not) grew tiresome. Fast.

My own parents were part of the “greatest generation.” My dad was in the Army Air Corps and my mother was training the in the Army Nurse Cadet Corp when they met. And they were great. And they weren’t.

The book would have been greatly improved had the people whose lives were featured told the stories themselves. In their words. Brokaw’s writing would have been difficult to take even as a long introduction but as a constant narrative, it was disruptive, conventional and irritating.

Also annoying were the numerous features of celebrities. I wanted to read about people like my parents, aunts and uncles, not ex-presidents and other luminaries whose stories have been often re-told and are readily available. How much better Mr. Brokaw’s book would have been had he just offered up stories of people who had not had the chance to tell them.

And while I understand the urge to feature two or three of the people he knew from his hometown, there was too much of that. By the end I had the feeling that instead of going outside of his own experience to look for the unsung people of WWII, from all walks and all places, he had maintained a narrow focus on those he’d either known from his hometown or met during his time in journalism.

Give me stories of WWII from people who never met Tom Brokaw before, please.

I didn’t finish the book. I closed it upon reaching the celebrity section and placed it upon the donation box.

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Books of the 1940s

I find reading literature from the era in which I am writing helps me to get the feel of the language and times. Many of the following books I’ve read over the years – AJ Cronin and Kenneth Roberts are favorite authors of mine, and I loved Nancy Drew and Laura Ingalls Wilder:

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1940
The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer, 1940
The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk, by Carolyn Keene, 1940
Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts, 1940
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1940

The Keyes of the Kingdom by AJ Cronin, 1941
Windswept by Mary Ellen Chase, 1941

The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis, 1942

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, 1943
Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier, 1943

Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945

The River Road by Frances Parkinson Keyes, 1946

Lydia Bailey by Kenneth Roberts, 1947
House Divided by Ben Ames Williams, 1947 (my mom’s favorite book of all time)
The Pearl by John Steinbeck, 1947

Shannon’s Way by AJ Cronin, 1948
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, 1948

1984 also by George Orwell, 1949 (1984 was also the year I graduated)

1940s: The Numbers

The decade of the 1940s was, from the perspective of seven decades past, a decade of numbers.

But in choosing the decade as a setting for my story, they are numbers to be looked at, as the nation changed drastically.

Before World War II, much of the country still resided in farm communities. No Ordinary Time, the book on FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt by Doris Kearns Goodwin, defines the 1940s as a “major economic turning point,” where the country started from “predominantly a small-town nation with the majority of citizens living in towns of fewer than 25,000.”

During the war, everything changed.

And nearly everyone was affected. The National World War II Museum reports that over 12 million Americans served in one of the branches of military service, while the Federation of Scientists has the number of at over 16 million.

My own father served in the Army Air Corps. His brother fought in Belgium, as did my father-in-law.

Also in that number were women: about 400,000 of them, according to the Department of History at George Mason University’s Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation. Here I have a family connection too, as my mother trained for the Army Nurse Corp.

Civilians – 15 million men and women according to Goodwin – left home seeking jobs in defense factories in the upper-mid-west and the west coast: manufacturing ships, tanks, jeeps and airplanes.

Raw material sources for manufacturing had been cut off by the enemy, and in order to produce enough vehicles quickly enough, scrap drives were held across the country to collect materials, such as tin and rubber.

Volunteers made socks, blankets and care packages to send to soldiers; they worked for the American Red Cross, practiced air raid precautions and entertained the troops through the USO.

At the war’s end, returning GIs, many of whom had visited countries they would never otherwise had seen, attended college under the GI bill (the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944), earned specialized degrees and settled in places other than their hometowns to find more service-oriented jobs than ever before, especially with the rise of the suburbs from the end of the decade and into the next.

And, of course many Americans never came home – but the numbers vary: the National WWII Museum puts the number at 671,278. PBS NewsHour, sourced by the US Department of Defense, has a lower number of 498,332. The Federation of Scientists states the total number killed at 405,399.

Another major change had its roots in 1944, even if it wasn’t in full effect for another eight years: the Federal Highway Act which provided for the construction of over 46,000 miles of interstate highway, connecting all states in the US: the largest and most expensive public works project ever at the time.

Before that, travelers depended upon the two-lane roads constructed in the late 1920s, which included the famous Route 66 (the main route for those traveling from the east to west coast, established in 1926). But those were roads with intersections and stopping points, unlike the “limited access” highways which are designed with mainly entrance and exit ramps.

The highways reduced the need for rail travel and railroads and depots across the nation withered and died. Towns that were not in the path of highway traffic – and ready consumers – struggled.

After the war, big city prosperity boomed in the US, which had become the major economic and defense power globally. Fewer jobs were in producing goods; more were service-oriented than ever.

The wealth was not shared with the farmer, however. And small farming communities, who had suffered great losses of young men who never returned home, faced tough economic times as farming became big business, resulting in more leaving these communities for cities where they could find jobs with steady pay.

The 1940s…In The Mood

In the mood for the 1940s? I am, as my work in progress is set in the decade of swing and World War II.

So what better way to kick off a series of posts on the 1940s than with the Glen Miller Orchestra and “In The Mood?”