The War - An Intimate History, 1941-1945

Zusatztext “Ken Burns has done it again. He has given us an intimate! memorable! and provocative portrait of America in World War II—the valor and victory! sacrifice and shame of ordinary Americans! north! south! east! and west. This is a treasure.” —Tom Brokaw “Heartrending . . . Unique not only among previous volumes that have accompanied Burns’s documentaries but among just about any book on World War II . . . It should be read by everyone in the family! from the high-schoolers to the Baby Boomers.” —Newark Star-Ledger From the Trade Paperback edition. Informationen zum Autor Geoffrey C. Ward wrote the script for the film series The War and is the winner of five Emmys and two Writers Guild of America awards for his work for public television. He is also a historian and biographer and the author of fourteen books, including most recently Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson . He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1989 and the Francis Parkman Prize in 1990. He lives in New York City. Ken Burns, producer and director of the film series The War, founded his own documentary company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His films include Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, which was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television. His work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two Academy Award nominations. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire. Klappentext Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs! the companion volume to the forthcoming PBS series! "The War" is the story of World War II captured in the hearts! minds! words! and deeds of those who made history at its most essential level: on the battlefields and on the homefront. Leseprobe Chapter One   December 1941-December 1942   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 i...

Product details

• Authors: Ken Burns, Kenneth Burns, Geoffrey C Ward, Geoffrey C. Ward, Geoffrey C./ Burns Ward
• Publisher: Knopf
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 11.09.2007
• EAN: 9780307262837
• ISBN: 978-0-307-26283-7
• No. of pages: 480
• Dimensions: 240 mm x 283 mm x 34 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous