Back Home [Hardcover]

Bill Mauldin (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 315 pages
• Publisher: William Sloane; 1st edition (June 1947)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891908560
• ISBN-13: 978-0891908562
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #592,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Returning to cold war america, November 21, 1999

By 

Douglas A. Jessen (Hardin Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back Home (Hardcover)

This is the best book that i have read on the return of GI's to the cold war america. Bill covers every thing from segregation to gun control to house un american activities comittie stuff. with every cartoon he makes you think about the deep real issues in american society.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SIMPLY A GREAT WORK OF IT'S TIME, January 12, 2006

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Back Home (Hardcover)

Recommend this one highly for any fan of Mauldin for here you get pure Mauldin, both his writing and his wonderfully insightful cartoons. This reader must understand that Mauldin wrote and drew from what he experienced. He drew from his times. I suppose that I am trying to say that not all will find his writings and observations "politically correct" by our standards of today. That is good though. To understand ourselves, as we are now, we must understand the thoughts and attitudes of those who came before us. In this work we get just that. Mauldin work is one of the best commentaries addressing the problems of post WWII American and the returning G.I. Recommend this one for anyone wanting a simple, good read, or anyone interested in the attitudes and thoughts of this era in our history.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Return, January 15, 2008

By 

PHILIP S WOLF (SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CA. USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Back Home (Hardcover)

When Bill Mauldin went to War he was a very young man. Five years later, he had lived through the World's greatest conflict and had documented that experience in words and pictures for the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, with his award-winning cartoons featuring the two GI dogfaces: Willie & Joe. His book: "Up Front" was a huge commercial and critical success on all levels and he was now a man on the top in the literary world.

"Back Home" is Bill's second book, and it begins where: "Up Front" leaves off. It is June 1945 and Bill is in Naples, Italy and now his new worry is not the German Army, it is how to get enough discharge points to get himself back to the USA and released from the Army and back into the civilian world. Lot's of the cartoons featured here again star Willie & Joe, but many others do not as they are more about the political state of affairs of the time {1945-1947). Bill's political insights are the key to the story of: "Back Home." Now, as an seasoned Veteran, Bill Mauldin was ready to tackle issues such as bigots, shysters, black-marketeers, evil landlords, and the new "Red Menace" of mother Russia.

This second book by Bill is not as well known as: "Up Front", but it is as great as that book and because of the author's growth and wisdom since the end of the War, this is a more mature work in every way. Bill, is just an: "Everyday Joe" and the folks of the 1940's responded to this and they were right there for him. This book is an American history lesson. "Back Home" is one of the finest books written about post-war problems, and the early days of the Cold War, that would bleed into the 1950's and 1960's.

This book is funny, but it is message of sadness. Now we are to witness the change that occurs as soon as World War II ends. The country is now living with new fears, and this book in it's honesty it tells just how our country began to change from the pre-War years into the post-War years. The inocence of America was fading in 1945, and Bill tells us the hows and whys of this change. This is essential reading by one of this America's greatest storytellers.
FIVE STARS !!!