“The Good War”

An Oral History of World War II

Studs Terkel

The Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, with a new preface by the author

“Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time.” —The New York Times Book Review

Winner, Pulitzer Prize

“The Good War”, for which Studs Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize, is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Terkel as interviewer. As always, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history of World War II.” With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history.

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Praise

“A powerful book, repeatedly moving and profoundly disturbing.”

—People

“Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks. . . . In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“The richest and most powerful single document of the American experience in World War II.”

—The Boston Globe

“I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book. Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.”