audio playaway / nonfiction (history: ww2). personal accounts from families in Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama from the Ken Burns documentary.

This seems to be fairly well done, to Ken Burns standards; my main issue with it is the length of the tracks (an hour or longer each), which makes it difficult for me to find my place again after I've drifted off to sleep (which I do a lot during audio books; it is why I like the format so much).

So while I've heard the entire book several times over by now, I was only conscious for small parts of it, and that's probably about as much as I'll ever "read" it. ( )

The companion volume to the seven-part PBS series by Ken Burns.
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.

Overdrive download

The War (2007)
An Intimate History, 1941-1945

by Geoffrey C. Ward
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As the subtitle indicates, The War captures the intimate experiences of Americans in WW2.

In Waterbury, Connecticut, Mobile, Alabama, Sacramento, California,and Luverne, Minnesota, we're given an overview of both war front and home front.
We see the war front in the air, on the sea and on the ground.
We're also given the opportunity of witnessing homefront thoughts, feelings and activities.
There are snapshots of the war's short term adaptations as well as long term life- altering events.

This informative narrative tells me that all were concerned and no one was left unaffected by WW2.
I enjoyed the human interest elements as well as the military history.

"The war touched every family on every street in every town in America and demonstrated that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives." ( Ken Burns and Lynn Novick)

I experienced The War as an audio book.
I understand that the written form contains photographs,maps and perhaps other interesting items.

I'll be looking for other components of this 2007 project.
This book is listed as a companion volume to a seven-part PBS series.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ♥ ( )

This looks at the war from more of the "common man" standpoint. Burns follows several different soldiers from their small towns to the battlefront. He tells the war from the viewpoint of places like Mobile, Alabama as well as the front. I liked that approach, but the later chapters are mostly just war with very little mention of life at home.

This book isn't looking to expose new facts about the war, or tell stories you haven't already read about or seen in movies. He leaves out a lot, and just focuses on what the war looks like mostly from the point of view of the G.I. on the ground. Along the way there are some interesting tidbits, but those aren't the point of the book.

I think Burns does a good job illustrating the cost of the war-- the giant machine at home that employed so many people, the psychological trauma to the soldiers, and the sheer amount of destruction and loss of life. He shows how it's possible that every American was affected by the war in some way.

I also enjoyed that the war story was told chronologically. You get a real sense of what happened when, and in relation to other important events.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. I've never seen the documentary but would jump at the chance to. ( )