"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this oral history collects interviews with Americans who experienced World War II directly. Subjects range from a pipe fitter's apprentice at Pearl Harbor to a crew member on the flight that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Through these first-person accounts, Studs Terkel documents the war's impact on American life, drawing on his skill as an interviewer to capture candid reflections on personal experience and self-analysis. The book expands Terkel's scope to global and historical dimensions, presenting voices that are open and unrelenting in their examination of the war years. The result is a collection of individual narratives that together form a comprehensive portrait of how Americans lived through and understood the conflict.