World War II (1931-1945)
“The Second World War presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it.” — Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” (1957)
Of the endless ocean of books on the Second World War, we have dozens and dozens of new and carefully chosen titles. I define it as beginning with the Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria and ending with not only V-E and V-J Days but also the immediate crises of displaced people, the Soviet Union’s creation of the Iron Curtain, and the growing revelations of the extent of the Holocaust.
In significant ways the Second World War was the defining crucible of the 20th Century. The First World War was prelude, the legacy of the 19th Century’s imperialism, and the Cold War was the sequel. Of the making of books about it there is no end — but the persistence of good research and good writing, and good publication underscores the war’s centrality of the world we live in today and the world our descendents will live in for the foreseeable future.
At Home with Ernie Pyle
At Home with Ernie Pyle
As anyone who has read his legendary WWII reporting knows, Ernie Pyle had an uncanny ability to connect with his readers, seeking out stories about the common people with whom he felt a special bond. A master of word painting, Pyle honed the skills that would win him a 1944 Pulitzer Prize for his battlefront reporting by traveling across America, writing columns about the people and places he encountered. At Home with Ernie Pyle celebrates Pyle's Indiana roots, gathering for the first time his writings about the state and its people. These stories preserve a vivid cultural memory of his time. In them, we discover the Ernie Pyle who was able to find a piece of home wherever he wandered. By focusing on his family and the lives of people in and from the Hoosier state, Pyle was able to create a multifaceted picture of the state as it slowly transformed from a mostly rural, agrarian society to a modern, industrial one. Here is the record of a special time and place created by a master craftsman, whose work remains vividly alive three quarters of a century later.