Michael C. C. Adams

Few aspects of American history are as subject to mythologization as its wars, and few American conflicts are as subject to mythologization as World War II. Published 30 years ago, before Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan raised the hagiography of World War II veterans to new heights, this slim (less than 200 pages) overview of the American experience of World War II is an attempt to introduce complexity and nuance into a subject long dominated by simplicity and patriotic platitudes.

Adams is writing for undergraduate audience whose knowledge of the war comes mostly from popular culture, and he does so superbly. His chapter on the origins of the war and America's involvement (from Versailles to Pearl Harbor), is a brisk and lucid overview, and the following chapter (a military overview of the war from the American perspective) is even more impressive. The remaining three chapters cover Americans' experiences in combat and on the home front, and the long-term impact of the war on American society in (roughly) the decade-and-a-half following VJ Day. If I was teaching a university-level American history course that included World War II, I'd assign this book in a heartbeat.

It's not just for undergraduates, though. Adams, merely a serviceable writer, is a superb synthesizer, and the book is a masterful overview of a huge range of complex topics. It is peppered with parenthetical reference to sources, and concludes with a 22-page bibliographic essay -- one section for each chapter -- that tells readers in search of more depth and detail where to go.

You'd have to be very well-versed indeed in the American experience of World War II not to get something new out of it, and if you wanted to read the proverbial "one book" on the subject, you could do a lot worse.… (meer)

Mention the Civil War and most people will envision sweeping battle scenes, cavalry charges, the Rebel yell, and the theme song to Gone With the Wind. What they generally do not think of is the extreme hardships faced by soldier and civilian, North and South alike, the lasting damage done to the countryside, local economies, and to an entire generation’s psyche. Therein lies the importance of Michael C. C. Adams’ Living Hell.

It is a human trait to romanticize the most extreme tragedies. It is how humans recover from experiencing the worst we can inflict on each other. It was done after World War I and World War II and especially after the Civil War. We know war is awful, but we gloss over the true extent of its terribleness and focus instead on an idealized image of soldiers marching off to glory and returning, battered and filthy but alive, to a hero’s welcome. With its use of actual letters and first-person accounts of eyewitnesses, Living Hell walks readers through a soldier’s evolution from excited and eager recruit to physically disfigured and mentally damaged soldier and the lasting trauma for soldier and family members alike. It is a brutal picture of the disgusting chaos of the soldiers’ camps, the absolute horror wrought by new battle techniques and weaponry, the complete abandonment of any wartime conventions and the psychological impact of total war. He covers the unimaginable scenes in Army hospitals, the gruesome sites of the countryside after a battle, and much, much worse. It is as realistic a picture of what the Civil War was like as one can get, and it is not pretty.

To be fair, most people understand that war is never pretty, and the Civil War was as bad as it could get. However, what sets Living Hell apart is that Adams puts aside the rose-tinted glasses that comes with the passage of time to show the true hardships by using eyewitness documentation. He lets the soldiers and civilians speak for themselves, and it is a stark picture indeed.

Separated into sections such as camp life, battles, post-battle details, the challenges facing the injured, civilian life, and the mental damage from total war, Living Hell delves into the details of each main topic and does so without obscuring anything. This means that this book is most definitely not for the faint-of-heart or easily disturbed. Readers should be careful about eating before, during, or after reading any section because it is as gruesome as gruesome can get.

Every aspect of Living Hell is horrifying and yet so utterly fascinating. Adams’ use of soldiers’ own words is particularly effective, as they leave nothing to the imagination in their correspondence or diary entries. War is not sexy, and war is not kind. Anyone who thinks so needs to read Living Hell for an excellent look at the hellishness of modern warfare before, during, and long after the war’s end.… (meer)

An extremely insightful text. It truly does clear up a lot of questions about WWII. The book was very well written and easy to follow. Adams separated his chapters nicely and anyone who is interested in WWII will most likely find this book enjoyable. I really liked how he talked about what was happening on the home front AND overseas. It was also nice for an author to really dig into why people believed that WWII was the best war ever. I read this book for a U.S history class and I found it to be really helpful. It helped me understand the issues surrounding the war during and after. It gave me the truth, not the glamor.… (meer)