You can now order my new book Reagan’s “Boys” and the Children of the Greatest Generation: U.S. World War II Memory, 1984 and Beyond from Routledge. I’m proud of it and am happy that it is now available to students, instructors, and academic libraries who are interested. The brief description I provided the publisher reads as follows:
During the 1980s and 1990s, aging Baby Boomer parents constructed a particular type of memory as they attempted to laud their own parents’ wartime accomplishments with the label “The Greatest Generation.” This book is the first to tell the entire story of this particular type of U.S. World War II memory begun by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984, and promoted the same year by newscaster Tom Brokaw. The story continues in 1994, when it was given academic credence by historian Stephen E. Ambrose, a sensory realism and ideal American character by director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks, sloganized by Tom Brokaw in 1998, and later interpreted in light of 9/11 and new wars.
If you’re interested in exactly how that particular type of mnemonic representation of World War II began and became popular from 1984 to roughly 2010, I hope you read through my book. I also hope the book acts to familiarize readers with a lot of great scholarship and thought on war and memory that inspired me to pursue the subject and write about it.
