Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming From World War Ii - Softcover

"[T]his somber book is a sharp reminder, as the Greatest Generation passes into history, that war is the most powerful of defining moments." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "[C]ompelling, nuanced...With his meticulous reporting and sensitive yet dispassionate writing, Childers pays the highest honor to the complete story of the Greatest Generation." --St. Louis Post Dispatch "Thomas Childers' heartbreaking book makes palpable the human cost of a conflict too often sanitized as 'the good war.' No war is good for those who fight it, he reminds us in scarifying descriptions of his three protagonists' travails." --Chicago Tribune "Childers's beautifully written, novelistic profiles movingly convey his subjects' wartime travails and their twilight struggles with disability and post-traumatic stress....Childers's absorbing study offers an important corrective to sanitized tributes to the Good War's legacy." --Publishers Weekly "A sympathetic, wide-ranging look at unseen casualties of World War II--those psychologically damaged by battle....A lucid study of a well-remembered war's forgotten soldiers." --Kirkus "In this provocative and eloquent book, Thomas Childers breaks significant new ground by chronicling the hidden history of the emotional toll that World War II exacted on those who fought it, and on those who loved them. I did not think there was anything fresh to say about the defining conflict of the modern world. Childers has proven me wrong--very wrong indeed. This is an important and engaging work." --Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston "Thomas Childers has made a brave and honest inquiry into a darker side of the Greatest Generation, the aftershock World War II inflicted on millions of veterans and their families. This haunting book penetrates the fog of myth surrounding 'The Last Good War.' It offers a fine homage to countless acts of heart breaking sacrifice." --Tom Mathews, author of Our Fathers' War "With Soldier From the War Returning, Thomas Childers has exposed the post-war trauma of three WWII veterans. They symbolize the struggle that many of our fathers and grandfathers experienced when the cheering stopped and the haunting by the war's long shadow remained. A compelling read for all generations." --David P. Colley, author of Safely Rest and Blood for Dignity "Sublime, cathartic, the 'Truth's own self, ' Childers' memorial to the emotionally damaged is a precious gift to World War II veterans, their baby-boom children, and all future generations scarred by wars whose wounds last far more than a lifetime." --Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Vietnam veteran, and author of Throes of Democracy: The American Civil Era 1829-1877 "Childers's beautifully written, novelistic profiles movingly convey his subjects' wartime travails and their twilight struggles with disability and post-traumatic stress....Childers's absorbing study offers an important corrective to sanitized tributes to the Good War's legacy." --Publishers Weekly "More emotionally telling than most histories and more historically revealing than many memoirs. This is a collective biography of casualties - visible and invisible - not only the men who lost limbs or minds, but also their wives and, inevitably, their children. It should be required reading for everyone in Washington who has the authority to send other people into war." --Washington Times

In "Soldier from War Returning", historian Thomas Childers shatters that myth. Interweaving the intimate stories of three families - including his own - he reveals the true cost of the war. Alcoholism, homelessness, and unemployment were rampant, leading to domestic violence and a skyrocketing divorce rate. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were diagnosed with psychoneurotic disorders (now known as PTSD). Though many veterans bounced back, others were haunted for decades afterward; some never fully recovered. Novelistic in its telling and impeccably researched, Childers' book is a stark reminder that the price of war is unimaginably high, and the toll can stretch across generations.