Dear John

Can a letter from home that ends a romance do real damage to a soldier far from it? Many American officers, service members, veterans and civilians believe it can.

Drawing on personal correspondence, oral histories, psychiatric case reports, popular songs and films, the author traces how the military and civilian society have tried to harness romantic attachment for the purposes of war, from the Second World War to the present day. Those efforts to regulate emotion often fell short, and women were frequently blamed when they did.

The book looks at wartime emotional life as a whole, examining how letter writing and storytelling overlap, how breakups and breakdowns connect, and how a shattered relationship at home can coexist with stronger bonds among comrades. Its accounts of individual experience move from grim to comic and through many shades in between. The study aims to reshape how readers understand relationships during wartime.