100 Books Like We're in this War, Too

I recommend this book because it gives a broader picture of the women who changed the way women participate in society forever. It wasn’t just building bombs, liberty ships, and planes that women had a part in. It was everything! When I’ve talked to women who lived during that time, and when I read this book, I realized how many ways women changed during that period of history.

Good friends stick together through thick and thin. That’s the premise I took away from The Beantown Girls. 

When one of three forever best friends from Boston learns that her fiancé is missing in WWII action, she determines to go to Europe and against all odds, find him. She convinces her two best friends—women with very different personalities, very different gifts, and skills—to join her as Red Cross Clubmobile girls in what could be a grand adventure or a terrible risk to their lives. 

They never expected to care so deeply for the soldiers they go to help, to encounter the horrors and deprivation of war they do, or that their friendship and camaraderie will be tested and yet become the thing that carries them through.

I absolutely love the layout of this book–the title, the photos, and the fonts. This irresistible chapter heading made me want to know more: “Training: Thrilled to Death with Everything.” At the start of the book, I knew nothing about World War II Red Cross volunteers and next to nothing about the war in Africa. LeOna’s letters are so exuberant with descriptions so vivid you feel like you are walking in her footsteps. I love the photos with her smiling face. I finished this book with a deep respect for the dedicated women who worked so hard to provide soldiers with comfort and a connection to home.

My favorite thing about this book is that it contains copies of the actual letters sent home by Dorothy, about half handwritten and the other half typed. The accompanying photos and newspaper clippings enhance the narrative of her work and travel in England. This is one of the most complete sets of letters I’ve ever seen. Dorothy was the Red Cross secretary at a U.S. Army hospital located at a country estate (think Downton Abbey). I love her conversational tone, charming descriptions, and positive attitude. I almost felt like I was her mother reading the letters as they arrived so many years ago.  

This book is more about the impact of war on the families of those who never returned from it. There isn’t a lot of combat content, but some of the letters are extremely moving. On the other hand, the title of the book is misleading, since some letters are indeed "last letters home," but they are in fact the last ones written before the soldier went home... In any case, although this book focuses exclusively on the British troops, it allows us to enter the intimacy of families torn apart by the war with great emotion.

The big question for World War II is what kept men fighting in appalling conditions, with high losses against an implacable enemy. McManus focuses on the American army to answer this question, but his answers could apply to many of the fighting men in other armies as well. The book explores the nature of combat and the psychological mechanisms used to cope with the conditions of modern war. This is a dimension of the history that too often gets overlooked as divisions and units are moved around on the historians’ map of the war, yet it is a central issue to understand what motivates soldiers and keeps them fighting effectively. Sadly, a great many did, indeed, end up as psychological casualties.

This is one of those topics that seems obvious once someone writes a book about it—but Susan Carruthers is the one who recognized a topic crying out for attention, and she’s the very best person I can imagine writing this book.

She’s good at poignancy and irony and heartbreak. That may sound like a strange thing to say about a historian—she’s good at heartbreak—but she understands that history is made up of people. There’s an argument here, in addition to some absorbing stories, but she’s also asking us to stop and think: what role have Dear John letters played in America’s wars?

Author Dandi Daley Mackall wrote With Love, Wherever You Are after reading a trunk-load of letters exchanged by her parents during their years as a nurse and doctor on the battlefields of Europe during World War II. Mackall's novel is based on genealogical research and is a story about people and the matters of their hearts, instead of military strategies and battles. Mackall was closer in time, though, since With Love, Wherever You Are is about her parents and set during the 1940s. She had access to primary sources in her research. As “The Greatest Generation” is passing away, it’s important that authors like Mackall are preserving these biographical stories.

 This is a collection of the letters between President Woodrow Wilson and his future second wife, Edith Bolling.

I already knew a bit about the role of Edith Bolling Wilson during her husband’s presidency. Reading their actual letters both shocked and entertained me. Woodrow Wilson, unlike his staid, professorial reputation, was quite the romantic.

It made me realize there was much, much more to their story, and it sent me on a journey to discover a relationship that changed the course of history.

One of the most interesting people I met in my research was Benjamin Gilbert, a young officer from Massachusetts, whose letters were edited and published for the first time in 1989. Gilbert writes openly about the trials and tribulations of camp life, including his attempts to woo the daughters of local gentlemen—and his visits to houses of ill repute. On one furlough home, Gilbert got a girl pregnant, and a recurring storyline in the letters is his attempt to weasel out of marrying her. Though full of colorful details, there’s one major way Gilbert failed me as an author: he was present in camp during the climactic moment of the Newburgh Conspiracy—Washington’s speech to the officers—but he says nothing about what happened. Come on, Lieutenant Gilbert. Think of the historians!