Reviews
Amazon.com
Veteran reporter and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw went to France to make a documentary marking the 40th anniversary of D-day in 1984. Although he was thoroughly briefed on the historical background of the invasion, he was totally unprepared for how it would affect him emotionally. Flooded with childhood memories of World War II, Brokaw began asking veterans at the ceremony to revisit their past and talk about what happened, triggering a chain reaction of war-torn confessions and Brokaw's compulsion to capture their experiences in what he terms "the permanence a book would represent."

After almost 15 years and hundreds of letters and interviews, Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, a representative cross-section of the stories he came across. However, this collection is more than a mere chronicle of a tumultuous time, it's history made personal by a cast of everyday people transformed by extraordinary circumstances: the first women to break the homemaker mold, minorities suffering countless indignities to boldly fight for their country, infantrymen who went on to become some of the most distinguished leaders in the world, small-town kids who became corporate magnates. From the reminiscences of George Bush and Julia Child to the astonishing heroism and moving love stories of everyday people, The Greatest Generation salutes those whose sacrifices changed the course of American history. --Rebekah Warren

From Booklist , January 1, 1999
Celebrity Brokaw proclaims the people involved with World War II the "greatest generation any society has ever produced." A documentary will be part of this media number. Bonnie Smothers
Copyright© 1999, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Steven Spielberg
"Tom Brokaw has delivered a gift to this and future generations by bringing us these inspiring personal stories of the average Joes, the GI Joes, the young men and women who served our country and shaped the foundation of post-war America. Although some became famous, most returned to their hometowns dedicated to building an even better world. We meet them in this book, whose pages give voice to the standards they set by their strength of character, informed by their experience during World War II. Tom has held up a mirror to reflect what may be their greatest legacy and pose in all of us the question--Is this generation--our generation--worthy as their beneficiaries?"

Book Description
"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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Customer Comments
Average Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 195

A reader from New York, NY , June 22, 1999
Wolrd War II Cheapened
We all know Tom Brokaw to be a second-rate, fear-peddling, shallow and unoriginal broadcaster. With this book, Brokaw manages to transplant all of these attributes to writing. As if poor and occasionally self-conciously florid writing did not make this book poor enough, Brokaw, as any mass-media ninny would do, focuses on truly trivial aspects of World War II, e.g., the experiences of "victims" -- women, etc. In the process, he completely eschews any meaningful tribute to what WWII was fought for, what any serious treatment of the subject would not leave out. The result is a thoroughly banal presentation of the most heroic and momentous event of the twentieth century. But, this is what I should have expected from a television newscaster. Churchill's "The Second World War" is still (by far) the best history of WWII, personal or otherwise. Is it any coincidence that WWII's greatest hero was also its greatest historian?

A reader from from North Carolina , June 21, 1999
A touching and taughtful book.
Tom Brokaw's book provides us with a reminder of how important the World War II generation is to our history. His glimpses into the lives of WWII vets and Americans on the homefront offer a touching insite into the era and a patriotic sentiment that seems lacking today. Well worth the time to read and remember the price many of our grandparents and parents paid to preserve democracy and freedom.

klaus_scher@hotmail.com from Munich, Germany , June 21, 1999
A book of simple hurra patriotism
I used to enjoy Tom Brokaw when he was NBC anchor man as a critical and competent journalist. His book however is a real disappiontment. For me, belonging to the post-war generation, it reads as a very shallow "hurra-patriotism" story, without any ctitical investigation of the time priode he covers. Not everything this generation did was so great and I would have expected from a critical journalist like Tom Brokaw to take this aspect into consideration as well. In this sense it is not very demanding book.

A reader from USA , June 20, 1999
A Wonderful Tribute to the Vets, Living and Decesed!!!!!
I have read Tom's book which I believe is the best, and most inspiring book I've ever taken the time to read. Any of the people who might have said that this book is shallow and lousy must be shallow and lousy themselves. I believe we as a nation HAVE forgotten in a large way the WWII vets who gave their lives and risked their lives so that the generations after them could live in a comfortable country, full of opportunity. They experienced the worst conditions this country had ever seen, and complained the least of any generation there has been. I am inspired and grateful for their sacrifice and modesty. I SUGGEST THAT EVERYONE THAT MAY HAVE THE CHANCE TO READ THIS BOOK, SINCERELY READ IT!! IT IS VERY, VERY GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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