“I cannot go anywhere in America without people wanting to share their wartime experiences....The stories and the lessons have emerged from long-forgotten letters home, from reunions of old buddies and outfits, from unpublished diaries and home-published memoirs....As the stories in this album of memories remind us, it truly was an American experience, from the centers of power to the most humble corners of the land.” —Tom Brokaw In this beautiful American family album of stories from the Greatest Generation, the history of life as it was lived during the Depression and World War II comes alive and is preserved in people’s own words. Photographs and time lines also commemorate important dates and events. An Army Air Corps veteran who enlisted in 1941 at age seventeen writes to describe the Bataan Death March. A black nurse tells of her encounter with wartime segregation. Other members of the Greatest Generation describe their war—in such historic episodes as Guadalcanal, the D-Day invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and Midway—as well as their lives on the home front. Starting with the Depression and Pearl Harbor, moving on through the war years in Europe, in the Pacific, and at home, this unique book preserves a people’s rich historical heritage and the legacy of a nation’s heroism in war and its courage in peace—in the shaping of their lives and of the world we have today.

"This "album of memories" introduces the reader to the people and places - neighborhoods, restaurants, department stores, parks, hotels, night clubs, racetracks, and theaters - that once put the charm in Charm City."--BOOK JACKET.

This collection provides a long-overdue examination of the nineteenth century as a crucible of new commemorative practices. Distinctive memory cultures emerged during this period which would fundamentally reshape public and private practices of remembrance in the modern world. The essays in this volume bring together scholars of History, Literature, Art History, and Musicology to explore uses of memory in nineteenth-century empire-building and constructions of national identity, cultures of sentiment and mourning practices, and discourses of race and power. Contributors approach the topic through case studies of Europe, the United States, and the British Empire. Their analyses of nineteenth-century innovations in commemoration at both the personal and the larger civic and political levels will appeal to students and scholars of memory and of the nineteenth-century world.