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Summary: Mr.Brokaw found a light switch,and turned it on
Review: My Dad jumped on D Day, 82nd Airborne(Devils in Baggy Pants}was wounded before he landed and spent the next few mos as a POW.As in Mr.Browkaws book these men never really talked about their total experience but I could sense it remained with him the rest of his life.Id like to thank Mr.Browkaw for reminding the rest of us what a true hero really is.
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Summary: This is a must read book for the children of the WWII vets.
Review: I've read countless books and seen all the great movies about WWII. Both of my parents served in the American Army during the War. My father was a teacher turned Sergeant in a Medical unit. He landed on Omaha beach on D-Day. My mother was a nurse who served as a Captain in the Paris Hospital as the war in Europe came to an end. Tom Brokaw has given me a view that I hadn't seen before. I now have a greater understanding of what my parents sacrificed. The book truly tells the rest of us what my parents could not. Through all the movies and documentaries, my parents seldom spoke of their trial and tribulations. I now understand a little more the reason why. I just wish the book would have been written prior to my father's death. I would have had so much to talk to him about, or at least appreciate more.
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Summary: Redundant and repetitious.
Review: "Tom...don't quit your day job."The Greatest Generation is both cliche-ridden and self-servng.This book is merely a platform for Mr. Brokaw's ultra-left leanings.Tom never tells us what some of these heroes think of our present "commander in chief."
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Summary: This book should be read by everyone.Excellent memories
Review: This book should be read by everyone.It is an unofficial thank you to the generation who asked for nothing and gave so much.Mr Brokaw brings so many things back to mind,good and bad.Which isn't bad. The book combinds humour and misty eyes.
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Summary: Fascinating, eye-opening, heart wrenching
Review: Reading this book makes me sad that my Dad is gone and I never asked him "What did you do in the war, Daddy". What an opportunity I missed!
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Summary: Factual title, "The Greatest Generation"
Review: Mr. Brokaw couldn't resist sprinkling - and at times launching - his political views throughout a book that was touted to be a tale of 'the greatest generation'. Certainly, all who fought and died during World War II did so, in part, to protect Brokaw's Constitutional right to express his beliefs freely, even in a book (supposedly) about them. I was around during those war years, and remember all to well the stars in the windows, including the gold one right next door for a Navy Grumman TBF radioman, who had been like a big brother to me. From my perspective, Brokaw showed bad manners and poor taste in soap-boxing his own pellucid biases, and thereby did a disservice to all - including the less privileged not featured in his book Of course it could be that good manners and good judgment are just two more values that are dying off as part of the 'the greatest generation'. The one unadulterated aspect of the book is its' title, "The Greatest Generation" - That is factual. (Anyone who wants to write a chronicle of history, particularly one covering the WW II era, should STUDY and use Doris Kearns Goodwin's , "No Ordinary Time" as a primer.)
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Summary: A worthwhile topic but lacking focus and proportion.
Review: Brokaw's thesis is that a generation tested by (a) the Depression, and (b) WWII, rose to the challenge and deserves our respect and admiration. This may be true, but Brokaw does not prove it. His book lacks the kind of rich specificity which would be convincing. For the various people he interviews, he gives us very little on how they survived the Depression. And as the book advances, we get less and less of the particulars of how the subjects experienced the war. The problem may be that there are too many subjects, or interviewees, to be handled with the thoroughness or depth that is finally convincing. At the end, we are left only with the warm feeling that they have survived, and we can all be grateful for that, but not with a sense that we have come finally to know them, especially in their past, and how that past has shaped them, which is, after all, the point of the book.
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Summary: Disappointing and shallow account of the ordinary heros WWII
Review: I was quite let down by the lack of real substance and information in the accounts. It is a great subject but the shallow treatment did not hold my interest. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers is much, much better.
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Summary: Individually - neat stories. Together - same stories
Review: My cryptic summary is trying to condense the fact that the individual stories are very interesting, put together they all start to run together into sameness. The indivudal accomplishments throughout the book as well as what this generation accomplished is undeniably fantastic. However, Brokaw's book ramrods this home with such volume that I simply couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to like this book, but I'll take Ambrose's D-Day book anyday.
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Summary: Today's generation gets to realize just how easy life is!
Review: Tom Brokaw tells us in his words, and in the words of others, just how heroic the people who grew up with nothing and fought for their country are. The book is not a literary masterpiece, just a compilation of compelling stories about real people and real struggle....a struggle that always results in a sense of pride and responsibility that just doesn't seem to exist today. Some of the book is more interesting than others; Brokaw seems to want to be as politically correct as possible, covering every possible race, creed, and gender. It does, in the final analysis, give the reader insight into the true battles of the 1940's and insight into the spoiled nature of those growing up in the late 20th century.
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