The War

The War is a companion to the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary series, and it tells the story of the Second World War from the ground up. Rather than leading with generals and treaties, it follows the experiences of ordinary Americans, drawing largely on their own recollections to show what the conflict cost and what it demanded of them. The narrative is anchored in four American towns: Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Mobile, Alabama. More than forty people from these communities appear across the pages, and their stories run from 1941 to 1945. The account moves forward month by month through the fighting, and it keeps the reader in the uncertainty of those years, when nobody could be sure how things would end. The major events are all covered, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the liberation of the concentration camps. Alongside them, the book turns to people whose wartime lives are less often told: prisoners of war, Japanese American internees, defense workers, schoolchildren, and families trying to hold together while their men were sent to Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa. The result is an intimate, unflinching portrait of the deadliest war in history. Maps and hundreds of photographs accompany the text.