The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 (Hardcover) Cheapest
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
By Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
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Product Description
The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced—and helped to win—the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost.
Focusing on the citizens of four towns— Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama;—The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Woven largely from their memories, the compelling, unflinching narrative unfolds month by bloody month, with the outcome always in doubt. All the iconic events are here, from Pearl Harbor to the liberation of the concentration camps—but we also move among prisoners of war and Japanese American internees, defense workers and schoolchildren, and families who struggled simply to stay together while their men were shipped off to Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa.
Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, including many never published before, this is an intimate, profoundly affecting chronicle of the war that shaped our world.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #14556 in Books
- Published on: 2007-09-11
- Released on: 2007-09-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 480 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
History buffs, Ken Burns fans, and anyone whose life has been touched by war will be awed by Burns’s new book, The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 , a stunning companion to his PBS series airing in September 2007. Focusing on the citizens of four towns, The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Maps and hundreds of photographs enrich this compelling, unflinching narrative. Check out some of the photographs and read the first chapter below. –Daphne Durham
Read the First Chapter of The War
A Necessary War
I don’t think there is such a thing as a good war. There are sometimes necessary wars. And I think one might say, "just" wars. I never questioned the necessity of that war. And I still do not question it. It was something that had to be done. –Samuel Hynes
Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, began as most days do in Honolulu: warm and sunny with blue skies punctuated here and there by high wisps of cloud. At a few minutes after eight o’clock, the Hyotara Inouye family was at home on Coyne Street, getting ready for church. The sugary whine of Hawaiian music drifted through the house. The oldest of the four Inouye children, seventeen-year-old Daniel, a senior at William McKinley High and a Red Cross volunteer, was listening to station KGMB as he dressed. There were other sounds, too, muffled far-off sounds to which no one paid much attention at first because they had grown so familiar over the past few months. The drone of airplanes and the rumble of distant explosions had been commonplace since spring of the previous year, when the U.S. Pacific Fleet had shifted from the California coast to Pearl Harbor, some seven miles northwest of the Inouye home. Air-raid drills were frequent occurrences; so was practice firing of the big coastal defense batteries near Waikiki Beach.
But this was different. Daniel was just buttoning his shirt, he remembered, when the voice of disk jockey Webley Edwards broke into the music. "All army, navy, and marine personnel to report to duty," it said. At almost the same moment, Daniel’s father shouted for him to come outside. Something strange was going on. Daniel hurried out into the sunshine and stood with his father by the side of the house, peering toward Pearl Harbor. They were too far away to see the fleet itself, and hills further obscured their view, but the sky above the harbor was filled with puffs of smoke. During drills the blank antiaircraft bursts had always been white. These were jet-black. Then, as the Inouyes watched in disbelief, the crrrump of distant explosions grew louder and more frequent and so much oily black smoke began billowing up into the sky that the mountains all but vanished and the horizon itself seemed about to disappear.
Read more from Chapter 1…
From Publishers Weekly
This lavishly illustrated companion to the September PBS documentary series reduces the American side of WWII to the local and personal. Documentarian Burns (The Civil War ) and historian Ward (The Civil War: An Illustrated History ) foreground the iconic experiences of ordinary people, including a young girl interned in a Japanese camp in the Philippines, marines in the thick of combat in the Pacific and a fighter pilot who exchanges letters with his sweetheart. Their stories are full of anxiety and exhilaration, terror and pathos. (Sample vignette: a GI casually tosses pebbles into the skull of a Japanese machine-gunner, still upright and wide-eyed after the top of his head has been shot off). The authors’ portrait of the home front glows with nostalgia—war bonds, scrap-metal drives, USO dances—but they also note racial tensions at a Mobile, Ala., shipyard and the bitterness of Japanese-American soldiers whose families were interned. In the background, Roosevelt and Churchill confer, Patton struts and growls, and arrows march across maps as the authors deftly sketch major campaigns and battles and offer tart criticism of inept generals. This visually appealing coffee-table book gives little idea of how and why America won, but a strong sense of what it felt like on the way to victory. Photos. (Sept. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Producer and war documentarian Ken Burns reads it all, almost. He retains his famous this happened to us style of telling history by having three other voices, one of them Tom Hankss, read a few sentences about every half-hour. The result has more cohesion and flow than a production in which multiple narrators share the task as equals. Burnss soft voice disappears into realistic images of flaming kamikaze planes diving into U.S. ships and the deaths on the Normandy beaches. His tempo may seem slow, but it yields perfect diction. The creators historical compression of WWII into nine hours of compelling audio meets Burnss intention of educating younger minds in an engaging manner about the greatest war of the twentieth century. J.A.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, AudioFile Best Audiobook of 2007 © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine– Copyright ©
Customer Reviews
Well done! One of the best on war
This is one of the best books on the WWII. I love it. It’s stripped off the hollyweirdish heroics and thats why this is great. It’s real and sticks well. I can’t get enough of it. The War and the companion book do make me appreciate the United States and its people’s sacrifices during the war. This is a great collection!
The War: 12941 to 1945
Well written and illustrated with photos.
Easy to find events.
Comprehensive for this period.
High recommend.
A more Personal Account of World War Two
Truly a great book written more about the more personal contacts with dealings of World War Two. Very informative and intimate feelings with a number of families and people. Was a little disappointed in the fact that other World War Two books dealt more with facts and day by day excursions with each Company; where they were, who were fighting, what exactly was going on and when. Whereas this book seemed to take on a more personal level with certain individuals and follow their activities. All in all it was still very informative and interesting reading.
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