Nasaw deftly explores the ambivalent legacy of a war that Americans have been taught to think of as the good one ... The heart of the book is Nasaw’s nuanced consideration of the incremental yet monumental construction of the 'veterans’ welfare state' throughout the 1940s ... In a lovely touch, Nasaw illustrates his book with Bill Mauldin cartoons, which are far more trenchant and provocative than most readers will remember.
As David Nasaw’s The Wounded Generation makes emphatically clear, a good war is an oxymoron. Just wars there are and necessary wars, but there are no good wars.
Richly informative and compelling, The Wounded Generation is an important history of the tragedies of war and the triumphs of a democratic society that fully supports veterans’ well-being.
Based on oral histories, correspondence, service newspapers, and governmental reports, this well-written account highlights one of the little-known and forgotten stories of postwar America.
