David Nasaw — The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II - with Kai Bird

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home, immeasurable. The heroism of the men and women who won the war may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured upon their return home. As historian David Nasaw makes evident in his masterful recontextualization of these years, the veterans who came home to America were not the same people as those who had left for war, and the nation to which they returned was not the one they had left behind. Contrary to the prevailing narratives of triumph, here are the largely unacknowledged realities the veterans--and the nation--faced that radically reshaped our understanding of this era as a bridge to today.The Wounded Generation tells the indelible stories of the veterans and their loved ones as they confronted the aftershocks of World War II. Veterans suffering from recurring nightmares, uncontrollable rages, and social isolation were treated by doctors who had little understanding of PTSD. They were told that they were suffering from nothing more than battle fatigue and that time would cure it. When their symptoms persisted, they were given electro-shock treatments and lobotomies, while the true cause of their distress would remain undiagnosed for decades to come. Women who had begun working outside the home were pressured to revert to their prewar status as housewives dependent on their husbands. Returning veterans and their families were forced to double up with their parents or squeeze into overcrowded, substandard shelters as the country wrestled with a housing crisis. Divorce rates doubled. Alcoholism was rampant. Racial tensions heightened as White southerners resorted to violence to sustain the racial status quo. To ease the veterans' readjustment to civilian life, Congress passed the GI Bill, but Black veterans were disproportionately denied their benefits, and the consequences of this discrimination would endure long after the war was won.David Nasaw is a historian, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and bestselling author of The Last Million, named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and History Today, and, according to The Economist, one of the "six must-read books on the Second World War"; The Patriarch, a New York Times Five Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the New-York Historical Society's American History Book Prize; and The Chief, winner of the Bancroft Prize. He is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and a past president of the Society of American Historians. In 2023, Nasaw was honored by the New York Public Library as a "Library Lion." His father served in the Army Medical Corps in Eritrea during World War II.Nasaw is in conversation with Kai Bird, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist. On July 21, 2023 Universal Studios  released a major motion picture, Oppenheimer, based on American Prometheus, the biography Bird co-authored with the late Martin J. Sherwin. Bird’s current project is a biography of Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer for Senator Joseph McCarthy, Donald Trump and the New York mafia (Scribner). His most recent books include The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter,   The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (2014), Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelishttps://politics-prose.com/book/9780593298695?ic_referral=X98lsMKcd8tyoiNSgeOS_wRAYM0t_NPnNEpGpfo9ZuMwM6qJvseUeuN5F0PCl2S5XJIxHFgmtFzWjSQVmP4vheQW64tmeMxJqdeqviNmK3VPQoKgOsyyq_FJWt7FJwQVp3wbw0k