I cannot recommend this enough. History tends to be very dry and sanitized by the people who write it. Generally the only good, juicy, HUMAN parts that survive are personal stories (journals, private letters).

The entire book is filled with first person accounts of life in the US during WWII. Sure, everyone has seen the Rosie the Riveter poster, but the stories in this book talk about _real life during that time period. People live in tents, they travel for the first time, they have sex, they divorce —My parents were pariahs in the Catholic church for being divorced in the 70s – I had had no clue that there was such a rash of divorces after WWII.

The book is chock full of the kind of information that never makes it to the textbooks, y’know, the parts that actually make it interesting.