Book Review: 'The Greatest Generation'
The term “greatest generation” used to smack of journalistic hyperbole or nationalistic jingoism, but the more I read the works of Stephen E. Ambrose ( D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, Band of Brothers ) or watch such classic documentaries as The War: A Film by Ken Burns and The World at War , the more I am inclined to agree with Tom Brokaw's use of that term to describe the men and women who came of age in the 1930s and '40s and created modern America. Brokaw, one of America's best television journalists and the former anchor of NBC's Nightly News, not only coined the phrase when he wrote The Greatest Generation; he backs it up in his fascinating and inspiring collection of personality profiles of men and women, some famous (Bob Dole, Julia Child, George H.W. Bush), some not-so-famous but prominent (Norman Mineta, Daniel Inouye), and some neither prominent nor famous yet vitally essential (Leonard Lomell, Jeanette Gagne Norton) who e...