Our Fathers' War: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation (Hardcover)

by Tom Mathews (Author) "My father hated war stories..." (more)
Key Phrases: World War, Audie Murphy, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
After more than 30 years at Newsweek, where he served as New York bureau chief among other roles, Mathews (Hazardous Duty) turned to writing books, often centering his fiction and nonfiction around the military. His latest project finds him, at "a ridiculously old age," sorting through "steamer trunks" of baggage from an American childhood spent in the shadow of WWII and its aftermath. After an opening chapter that briskly and episodically tells the story of his childhood and struggles with a Greatest Generation father now in his 80s, Mathews, following the advice of an old song, musters nine other father-son dyads and devotes a chapter to each, telling their stories and using them to reflect and refract his relationship with his father, rekindled after years of dormancy. It's a conceit that works terrifically; Mathews avoids mawkishness by delving into his and his friends' unpredictable reactions to unexpected revelations, as the fathers upload material that has been waiting for an audience for decades. Anyone with an opaque-seeming father will find compelling the emotive core of this book—in which seeming tough guys manage to find and repair (though not without difficulty) a great deal of damage—and those who collect Greatest Generation lore will not be disappointed, either. Agent, Alice Martell.(On sale May 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The "generation gap" became an oft-recited mantra in the 1950s and 1960s, conjuring up images of rebellion versus complacency, rock 'n' roll versus conventional pop, and sexual license versus restraint. At the core, the term indicated a gulf between the generation that endured a depression and global war, and their offspring, the so-called baby boomers. Mathews, a journalist, novelist, and biographer, has had a long, tempestuous relationship with his father, a World War II vet. That relationship inspired him to write this book, in which he examines the relationship between 10 WWII vets and their baby-boomer sons. These men and their sons are a varied lot, including Utah Mormons, Bronx Jews, and southern-bred African Americans. What these pairs share is a sometimes-unbridgeable gap; no matter how their sons try, they cannot truly share the raw emotional experiences that war engendered in their fathers. The individual stories are often moving, sometimes heartrending, and sometimes funny. While these stories suggest that genuine empathy is impossible, reconciliation and mutual respect are attainable and worthy goals. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767914201
• ISBN-13: 978-0767914208
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,857 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, Aching and Understanding, June 1, 2005

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

America's young men and women who grew up quickly during the 1940s became known as the Greatest Generation for their willingness to sacrifice for their country and families. Many were born into immigrant households; their parents came to this country for myriad reasons, whether to escape religious or political persecution or simply to make a better economic life.

These "children" answered the call to duty, often at a terrible price. Even those who were fortunate enough to return from the battlefields did so as damaged goods, carrying scars both physical and psychic from their ordeals, problems that did not always end when they reached the safety of their home shores.

Tom Mathews was a son of one of these veterans. He relates his awkward experiences, and those of his contemporaries, in OUR FATHERS' WAR: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation.

The long-time Newsweek writer and editor reports on ten families for which those aforementioned scars never completely faded. The fathers returned home, still young men, to their own children born in their absence. Their need to feel control, after years when much was out of their control, impacted on these children. They were demanding, with little patience for what they perceived as weakness or cowardice in their progeny.

Grace under fire did not come easily to the older generation of Mathews's work. Despite accomplishing extraordinary things, many cursed themselves for self-imposed failures to act like Audie Murphy, one of WWII's most legendary figures.

Mathews writes of Murphy's own account of the action that won him the Congressional Medal of Honor, in which the All-American hero admitted to being scared.

"Manically, I hauled down the Oxford English Dictionary's giant Volume C. First I looked up courage: 'that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking.'

'I was scared' [Murphy had written].

"Then I checked out coward: 'one who displays ignoble fear or want of courage in the face of danger.'

'I was scared' [Murphy had written].

"What was this? Either Audie Murphy was yellow or the accepted definition was full of s---. You didn't have to be a genius to cipher it out.... Without fear there could be no courage."

The theme of fear under wartime conditions, and the determination not to show such weakness back home, is a main component of each chapter.

Many veterans refused to talk about their experiences, perhaps believing that if you weren't there, there was no way you could understand. They passed their physic scars on to their children who grew up confused, at once desirous of the love and approval of their fathers, but at the same time repelled by the inexplicable hostility --- even physical abuse --- they received. In some cases the need for approval manifested itself when it was the younger generation's turn to fight in Vietnam, some of the sons acting heroically if recklessly, as if that would finally win their old man over.

As the book concludes with Mathews's reconciliation with his own father, readers might come to think that this book was a purgative for the author's troubled soul. He finds comfort in others like him (and it's amazing how many others there are).

A truly touching story, told with an aching longing for acceptance, understanding and love, OUR FATHERS' WAR is one that could carry over to present-day fathers and sons stuck in the quagmire of mis- or incommunications.

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Post-war Stories, July 18, 2005

By	Nancy Frazier (Leverett, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The effects of war on those who fight and on their families is complicated. Tom Mathews' father fought in World War II and the son's relationship to his father after the war is the foundation for this book, OUR FATHERS' WAR.
Mathews' own memories of growing up and his efforts, as an adult, to understand his father are widened by accounts of other sons whose fathers were also veterans of the Second World War, a cohort now known as "the greatest generation." The father/son dynamics in this book are as moving as they are difficult. Though the narrative follows what happened after that particular war, it could hardly be more timely and significant than it is today as we try to understand new generation of men and women now returning from war and their children.
Mathews' book is profound and valuable.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Boomer whining, November 18, 2005

By	war son (indy) - See all my reviews

this book is just another example of the blame game... nobody takes responsibility for their own actions... couldn't it be your father was a jerk before he went to the war... i don't doubt that the war had a profound effect on them, but so did the depression in which most of them grew up... my father was in the war, saw allot of combat, was at the liberation of a concentration camp, and came home and raised his family with love and kindness. he didn't feel like he needed to psychoanalyze the whole experience... he shielded his kid's from the war because it was ugly and talked about it only with his fellow soldiers... what's so wrong with that...