OMG WWII

I tend to be late coming to most internet memes. So you've surely seen it, but I got a chuckle out of "OMG WWII on Facebook."

A Nation Forged in War

Because your faithful scribe is sometimes a bit of a retard, I just realized that our friend Tom Bruscino's truly excellent book, A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along, is not over there in the right-hand column about our books that too damned many of you people ignore on a daily basis. Consider the error corrected.

And would it kill you to have all of those books in your library? I think not. After all, I give you freeloaders free content on a semi-regular basis.

Remaking Memory or Getting it Right

At the Michigan War Studies Review Tom Bruscino has a great article, "Remaking Memory or Getting It Right? Saving Private Ryan and the World War II Generation." I am teaching a US history through film class for our Maymester this year that will cover the US since 1945 but I may well start with Saving Private Ryan (and Tom's essay) before moving on to The Best Years of Our Lives (one of my favorite movies of all time) and the twin pillars of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement that so defined American life in the generation and more after World War II.

I suspect that Tom likes Saving Private Ryan more than I do, but I think he does a really good job of placing the movie within the larger filmography of which it is a part and in putting forward a useful argument about the ways in which memory and history interact and how we think of World War II as a result.

Bruscino Bait

The New York Times published a somewhat peculiar op-ed this past weekend. I cannot be certain, but it seems that in "How World War II Wasn't Won" David P. Colley, the author of Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, gets a very high-profile opportunity to lay out the thesis of his book, a gig many, many, many of us would love to have the opportunity to take.

As a result, though, Colley gets to make a pretty history-centered argument. I have no idea as to the merits (or novelty) of the argument, though I have to assume that by going after Eisenhower Colley is positioning himself in some sort of revisionist camp. Hopefully someone who knows more about this than I do will weigh in. (Calling Tom, Tom Please Report For Duty!)