Looking for the Good War

A thought-provoking exploration of America''s complex relationship with war, violence, and national identity in the post-World War II era.

"A remarkable book, from its title and subtitle to its last words . . . A stirring indictment of American sentimentality about war." —Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post

In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet, a professor of English at West Point, reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II. She exposes the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans that was suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States'' "exceptional" history and destiny.

Samet traces the war''s ambivalent legacy in mythologized figures such as the war correspondent epitomized by Ernie Pyle, the erstwhile G.I. turned cop or criminal in late-1940s pulp fiction and films, the disaffected Civil War veteran of the Cold War Western, and the resurgent military hero post-Vietnam. These figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes toward violence, liberty, and nation that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and respond to assumptions about national identity affirmed by World War II.

As the United States reassesses its roles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, it''s time to rethink our national mythology surrounding World War II and its impact on our sense of national destiny, beliefs about the use of American military force, and inability to accept the realities of recent decades of devastating conflict.