Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Frank Kermode, in The New York Times Book Review, hailed it as "an important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds," and Lionel Trilling called it simply "one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time." In its panaramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world.
Now, in Wartime, Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict he himself fought in, to weave a narrative that is both more intensely personal and more wide-ranging. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, on the image of the Great War in literature, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on common soldiers and civilians. He describes the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II. He analyzes the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality (the early belief, for instance, that the war could be won by "precision bombing," that is, by long distance); he describes the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most important, he emphasizes the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity and wit. Of course, no Fussell book would be complete without some serious discussion of the literature of the time. He
examines, for instance, how the great privations of wartime (when oranges would be raffled off as valued prizes) resulted in roccoco prose styles that dwelt longingly on lavish dinners, and how the "high-mindedness" of the era and the almost pathological need to "accentuate the positive" led to the downfall of the acerbic H.L. Mencken and the ascent of E.B. White. He also offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world.
Fussell conveys the essence of that wartime as no other writer before him. For the past fifty years, the Allied War has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by "the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty." Americans, he says, have never understood what the Second World War was really like. In this stunning volume, he offers such an understanding.
Industry Reviews
`Paul Fussell has written the best book I know of about World War I. Now he has written the best book I know of about the Second World War. No novel I've read surpasses its depiction of the awful human cost to all sides of modern warfare. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's unforgettable.' Joseph Heller
`Professor Fussell has written a riveting book. Many have recently appeared to cash in on the half-century of Chamberlain's reluctant declaration, but I would say that, to all who lived through that war, and to those generations who wonder what the fuss was about, this one is close to obligatory reading.' Anthony Burgess, Observer
'memorable portrait of the last war'
Independent
'just as clever, witty, painful, disturbing ... as the first'
John Grigg, The Times
'Fussell's book is wide-ranging in its concerns and thoroughly researched.'
Sunday Correspondent
'memorable and distinctive ... Wartimeis no friendly journey down memory lane. It forces you to think, and at the end forces you to feel.'
Asa Briggs, Sunday Times
'characteristically wide-ranging ... Fussell's point is that war is barbaric, and no amount of high ideals and fustian rhetoric can disguise that central fact ... a lively, shocking and grimly funny book.' The Listener
'Fussell's book is wide-ranging in its concerns and thoroughly researched. There is much that is vivid and to the point'
Alan Ross, Sunday Correspondent
'Professor Fussell has written a riveting book ... I would say that, to all who lived through that war, and to those generations who wonder what all the fuss was about, this one is close to obligatory reading.'
Anthony Burgess, Observer
'unlike most military histories and documentaries, it does not glorify generals and, unlike flag-waving propaganda works about war, it leaves an anti-war aftertaste'
Herbert Mitgang, International Herald Tribune
'as shocking an account of disaster and human error as one could find anywhere - and the pity of it is that it is all true'
Geoffrey Moore, Financial Times
'A memorable portrait of the last war, constructed from personal anecdotes.'
Tim Blanning, Independent
'His technique is simple but effective; he looks at the war "from the bottom up".'
Tim Blanning, Independent
'Fussell is a wonderful writer - at once elegant and earthy. He gives us much to ponder in this volume, and, despite the grimness of the subject, considerable pleasure.'
Nina King, Washington Post
'Wartime is an important and indispensible book'
Library Journal
'brilliant, engaging cultural history'
Publishers Weekly
'Funny, upsetting, at times brilliantly illuminating'
Kirkus Reviews
'It is the work of a notably honest man ... his portrait of a conflict which was unwanted, total and interminable is superb'
Philip Oakes, New Statesman & Society
'constructs a memorable portrait of the last war'
The Independent
'surgically removes yet more illusions about our supposedly 'clean' World War II'
Richard Eyre, Observer
'Professor Fussell has assembled a great deal of arresting material ... though cruder and less tidy than the argument of his Great War book, may in fact come closer to the truth'
John Keegan, Sunday Telegraph
'constantly absorbing'
Sunday Times
'This is a book that ought to become a bible for the peace movement.'
Paul Pickering, Sanity
'If only there were more literary critics like Paul Fussell. Wartime, finally, is a book that is movingly expressive of the extremes of sadness and humor that mark the period. It is also the work of great scholarship. Fussell's creative engagement with his material, his rigor and his adventurous but clear style make him a model for contemporary cultural commentators.'
Robin Gerster, The Herald, Melbourne
'This is a book that ought to become a bible for the peace movement. I have never seen such a concentrated and stylish debunking of war. Fussell has produced a masterpiece.'
Paul Pickering, Sanity
'Wartime is a brave attempt to take the Second World War by the scruff of the neck and shake out a few of its secrets. Paul Fussell is refreshingly unafraid of voicing his opinions. As at the end of every war, the soldiers are grimly certain that 'the real war will never get into the books'. Wartime is an honourable attempt to see that it does.'
Toby Banks, Living Marxism
'Truth was a major casualty; the realities of the war were sanitised to protect the decent innocent. Here Fussell gives us his scorching correction.'
Observer
'Paul Fussell's Wartime deserves to become a classic'
Sunday Times
'Wartime is a brave attempt to take the Second World War by the scruff of the neck and shake out a few of its secrets. Paul Fussell is refreshingly unafraid of voicing his opinions.'
Living Marxism
