Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic [Hardcover]

Paul Fussell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0316297178 | ISBN-13: 978-0316297172 | Publication Date: October 1996 | Edition: 1st

A soldier recounts his experiences during World War II and explains how, after being seriously wounded, he vowed he would never take orders again, a decision that colored his later years as a Harvard grad student and Rutgers University professor. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

From Publishers Weekly

War as a crucible of character: that is the theme of this searching, courageous memoir from Fussell, a National Book Award winner for The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell, who grew up in the "highly privileged suburb" of Pasadena, Calif., was called to active duty in May 1943. Sent later that year to Europe as a 19-year-old Army infantry officer, he engaged in combat numerous times and, in March 1945, suffered shrapnel wounds in southeastern France. War began to change Fussell when, days after his arrival, he saw his first bodies: "My boyish illusions, largely intact to that moment of awakening, fell away all at once, and suddenly I knew that I was not and would never be in a world that was reasonable or just." When Fussell returned home after the war, he resolved "that I was finished with coercion and murder forever." That decision led him to academia, where he could enjoy a relatively unfettered life and independence of mind. Fussell traces the effects of war on his later activities, covering his personal life, his teaching and his writing. Experiences of a half century ago continue to haunt the author: "sometimes," he confesses, "I waste time devising wild schemes of revenge against the Germans." The primary focus here, however, is on those experiences themselves, presented in unflinching prose as Fussell offers a moving testimony to the indelible place of WWII in the life not only of one man, but of a generation. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316297178
• ISBN-13: 978-0316297172
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,305,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, trenchant memoir on the evils of war and authority, December 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (Paperback)

Fussell's work is searingly honest and forthright. He treats war as the unrelieved hell it is, not from the position of those who favor war, or those who are opposed to it, but from those who are on the ground doing the fighting and the dying.And more than this, his book also addresses the corrosive influences of money, advertising, and authoritarianism that has replaced critical thought and learning in this country. We have become the Faustian culture that we were warned about half a century ago---the culture that replaces all its values of honesty, integrity, achievement, learning, for material gain that eats away at the foundations of culture. And yet we will survive; for like the lonely priests who in the year 1100 kept the ancient world alive in remote places like Ireland and Spain, thinkers and writers like Fussell are preserving culture and ideals against the onslaught of modern day Visigoths who have decamped in the courtyard. A singular achievement that is moving and provocative. Only ninnies at the Kirkus Review would be bothered by such blatant honesty.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not fun, but profoundly moving, December 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (Paperback)

I'm not a literary person, I can't spell well, and I am not an infantryman. I was in the Army during the Viet Nam war, and I have a broad range on interests. I didn't choose this book, it was a gift. But it is one of the most moving books I have ever read.

Fussell is a critic, and he indirectly claims that his experiences in WWII were "the making of a skeptic" - and maybe it was. It is fantastic to see him skewer all forms of phoneyness and cover-up - including his own. You also get the impression that he is an uncompromising and very interesting character - but not fun or easy to get along with.

A real career combat infantryman I know had glanced at the book and claimed that Fussell just didn't understand Sherman's quote, "War is hell" and whined too much. I agreed that there was some truth to the criticism, but I got him to read the whole thing. His opinion changed dramatically for the better.

O.K., it is pretty much negative, but you can see underneath all that, he loves life, infantrymen, and people who try their very best and have honor. One of the few heros in the book is Gen. Eisenhower - but he is critical of President Eisenhower. It's a complex book, and he's a complex man. Get a glimpse inside him by reading this book.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars H.L. Mencken Meets Robert Graves - Review of Doing Battle, December 8, 2002

By 

Ralph Peters (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (Paperback)

Doing Battle is an excellent book for these troubling times. Though obviously a prickly sort, Fussell his kept his critical faculties intact and properly skewers ineptitude, careerists, rationalizers, martinets, and soft-headedness. The center-piece of this autobiography is Fussell's experience as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in France and Germany in WWII. Fussell takes aim at the military - recounting the caprices and cruel arbitrariness of his own service with a scalpel-like pen.

Fussell also has little use for the beer-fueled sports culture that now dominates the American cultural landscape. He is first and foremost a defender of elitism - not an elitism based on social or economic class, but based on what and how one thinks and comports oneself in doing the tasks of daily life. Doing Battle is about honor and integrity, with Fussell having been lucky enough, or bright enough, to have had a series of teaching jobs that allowed his convictions and sense of honor and self to survive largely intact.

Fussell writes beautifully and movingly. He also lays himself bare in Doing Battle. It is a rare book in that it is scholarly as well as a good, quick read. The influence of Mencken is clearly felt. You put the book down at the end regretfully. You then begin the processs of recommending it to your special friends - the ones that you think will "understand."

I recommend the book highly.