"In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on
the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of
the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with
the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to
their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to
Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation
of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women
the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and
the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose,
but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all,
responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered
through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we
have today.
"At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love,
and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the
bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the
call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of
conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They
succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous and short-lived celebrations
and immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They married in record numbers
and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation made it possible for more
of them to attend college than any society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new science, literature,
art, industry, and economic strength unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach the twilight
of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so many
stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think
that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too.