2023.003.004

A note from the donor: "An interesting perspective of war particularly when considering the author is a professor at West Point. She believes that some wars may be necessary - there is no such thing as a good war. She feels that figures like Tom Brokaw glorify war rather than focusing on the trmendous negative impact. A very interesting read."

Description of the book - "In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans—all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States’ “exceptional” history and destiny. Ranging across film and literature, she finds the war's ambivalent legacy in some of its most heavily mythologized figures: the war correspondent epitomized by Ernie Pyle; the character of the erstwhile G.I. turned either cop or criminal in the pulp fiction and feature films of the late 1940s; the disaffected Civil War veteran who looms so large on the screen in the Cold War Western; and the resurgent military hero of the post-Vietnam period. Taken together, these figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes toward violence, liberty, and nation—attitudes that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and that respond in various ways to various assumptions about national identity and purpose established or affirmed by World War II."

This hard cover print has a frame of 5.5 x 8.5" with 354 pages and a dust jacket.