Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic

For most, World War II is nothing but a chapter in history--for most Americans, a rosy and happy one. But Paul Fussell, a novelist and WWII veteran, reminds us that only those who've experienced it can truly understand that war is hell. He writes with bite and humor of the horrors and inequalities of the so-called "Good War," which he says "for the United States, [was] an unintended form of eugenics, clearing the population of the dumbest, the least skilled, the least promising of all Americans." Not exactly the thoughts of a sentimentalist, but the notion that war is horrible should be eternally reinforced, and Fussell does so with a fury and skill few writers can muster.

• The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 (Modern Library Chronicles)
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
• The Great War and Modern Memory