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Title: A worthwhile topic but lacking focus and proportion.
Review: Brokaw's thesis is that a generation tested by (a) the Depression, and (b) WWII, rose to the challenge and deserves our respect and admiration. This may be true, but Brokaw does not prove it. His book lacks the kind of rich specificity which would be convincing. For the various people he interviews, he gives us very little on how they survived the Depression. And as the book advances, we get less and less of the particulars of how the subjects experienced the war. The problem may be that there are too many subjects, or interviewees, to be handled with the thoroughness or depth that is finally convincing. At the end, we are left only with the warm feeling that they have survived, and we can all be grateful for that, but not with a sense that we have come finally to know them, especially in their past, and how that past has shaped them, which is, after all, the point of the book.
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