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.