The Wounded Generation - Coming Home After World War II

From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a revelatory reexamination of post-World War II America and the nation''s unhealed traumas, exposing the fault lines that characterized the country then and now

The veterans of World War II returned to America with great expectations. After all, the Great Depression was over, the Germans and the Japanese were defeated, and the home front was celebrating victory. After their heroic service overseas, Black service members believed their countrymen would look beyond racial divides, Jewish soldiers hoped antisemitism would be vanquished, and the wounded assumed that America would care for their injuries. More than 75 years later, the enduring image of postwar America is still informed by the hopes and dreams these veterans carried home with them, that their future – and with it, the nation’s – would be brighter than the past. However, as historian David Nasaw makes evident in this masterful recontextualization of these years, the stories of post-World War II America which persist across art, history, and literature, have failed to account for the realities of the veterans’ return as well as the traumas that characterized postwar America– the consequences of which we still live with today.

In
In this richly textured examination, David Nasaw presents a fascinating and complicating tableau of the postwar years. Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including personal memoirs and oral histories from veterans themselves, he looks beyond the welcome crowds and victory parades, and illuminates a largely hidden story of a country in transition....

Product details

• Authors: David Nasaw, Nasaw David
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 14.10.2025
• EAN: 9780593298695
• ISBN: 978-0-593-29869-5
• No. of pages: 496
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 242 mm x 38 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book; 20th Century, military history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Military / Veterans, General & world history, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Second World War, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), General and world history, c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2), Military veterans, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General