We Were in the Big One - by Mark P Parillo (Paperback)

About the Book

World War II was truly the largest and greatest conflict in U.S. history. We Were in the Big One: Experiences of the World War II Generation is a collection of diary entries, letters, photographs, and other documents from that era. Carefully selected from the Eisenhower Librar...

Book Synopsis

World War II was truly the largest and greatest conflict in U.S. history. We Were in the Big One: Experiences of the World War II Generation is a collection of diary entries, letters, photographs, and other documents from that era.

Carefully selected from the Eisenhower Library's World War II Participants Collection and other archives, this material-generated in response to the historical events themselves-reflects the mindset of the people who produced it.

These documents shed light on one of the most important periods of American history.

We Were in the Big One is one of the first books to make primary source material on this era widely available for use in the classroom. These contemporary documents reveal a great deal about the attitudes of the World War II generation toward matters such as gender, political beliefs, race, religion, social and cultural mores, and personal values.

With a concise introduction and headnotes that introduce each document, Prof. Parillo provides an interpretive framework that puts the selections in context for students. Parillo shows how the war affected Americans across gender lines, across social and political spectrums, on the home front, and on the battlefield.

This compelling text enables students to discover how the war truly influenced an entire generation of Americans. We Were in the Big One is an excellent resource for courses in American twentieth-century history, World War II, and U.S. social and cultural history.

Review Quotes

We Were in the Big One is a well-organized, thoughtfully edited collection or original documents that provides a good sense of the impact of World War II. Many of the documents come from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and have not been widely seen. These and other materials together illuminate the various ways Americans responded to the war.

H. P. Willmott deserves great credit for depicting a momentous period of World War II in such an easily understood format.

In this fine volume, Mark Parillo succeeds in capturing the spirit and flavor of the World War II experience for Americans, both civilian and military. We Were in the Big One is an excellent addition to our knowledge of World War II. It benefits from an obviously sagacious editor who understands the era quite well. Parillo deserves congratulations for an outstanding job of editing these first hand, documentary sources. His colleagues are now much the richer for his efforts.

Professor Parillo has assembled an exceptional sample of personal perspectives on World War II. The testimony of American military personnel, war workers, families, and overseas observers provides a well-rounded view of the wartime experience. These are people you will care about.

The GIs all claimed that letters from home made the best morale boosters. This book demonstrates how well the letters written home by the GIs boost our historical insight. World War II was a 'people's war' and these letters tell us what the people who fought it really were like.

This is a welcome contribution to the literature on the war because it helps the reader appreciate the human dimension of the conflict and because it draws attention to sometimes underemphasized aspects of the war's impact on American society as a whole.

About the Author

Mark P. Parillo is associate professor of history at Kansas State University and a faculty member of the KSU Institute for Military History and Twentieth Century Studies.