The Good War


"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II is an oral history of World War II compiled by Studs Terkel. The work received the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
"The Good War" consists of a series of interviews with various men and women from across the globe who directly experienced the events leading up to, including, and following the Second World War.

Chapters

The book's chapters and subchapters, with the names and topics of the subjects involved, are as follows:

Book One

The Good War met with positive reviews upon its publication in the fall of 1984. Loudon Wainwright, writing for The New York Times, stated in a review published on October 7, 1984, "Ten, 20, 30 years from now the best witnesses to World War II will be largely gone. But Presidents honoring them will surely have access to a copy of Studs Terkel's most recent exercise in memory harvesting, The Good War. It is hard to see how any reader now or then can fail to benefit from its 600 pages." Gaddis Smith, in a capsule review in the journal Foreign Affairs, claimed, "This book sustains Studs Terkel's reputation as the nation's foremost practitioner of the difficult art of oral history." Kirkus Reviews assessment of the book, dated October 11, 1984, included the following: "In World War II memories, Terkel has found a great, untold story--with fore-shadowings of Vietnam and aftershocks of atomic warfare."
In 1985, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

Subsequent influence

has said that The Good War inspired him to write his novel World War Z. Brooks stated: "It's an oral history of World War II I read when I was a teenager, and it's sat with me ever since. When I sat down to write World War Z, I wanted it to be in the vein of an oral history."