A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2007, Alfred A. Knopf On September 23, 2007, PBS aired A Necessary War,  Episode One of Ken Burns' seven-part series The War. Co-written by Burns and historian Geoffrey C. Ward, The War is a 14-hour look at World War II and how it affected the U.S. through the experiences of four geographically-distributed towns in America - Luverne, Minnesota; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; and Sacramento, California. 12 days earlier, Alfred A. Knopf had published a companion book, The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945. The 408-page hardcover was co-written by Ward ( Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 ) and filmmaker Burns. (Ward and Burns have co-written five books and collaborated on many documentaries since 1990's The Civil War, including Baseball, Jazz, Prohibition, and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. ) The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who...

The Second World War was the largest, bloodiest conflict in history. It was fought on three of the seven continents and involved every major power of the time. Some of the combatant nations (most notably France and Italy) changed sides at least once between 1939 and 1945, and by the time Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945 over 50 million men, women, and children were dead, millions more were wounded and/or uprooted, homeless, and bewildered by the war's effects. Indeed, those of us now living in the early 21st century are still living with the aftermath of World War II; many of the crises we now face can be traced to decisions made during or shortly after the war. John Keegan's The Second World War is a one-volume general history of the 1939-45 conflict, and it should be read more as an introductory text rather than a comprehensive "this-is-the-book-that-explains-the-whole-darned-thing" opus. It's too short (595 pages, not counting the bibliography or i...