Over Here
How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Extraordinary stories of ordinary men and women whose lives were changed forever by landmark legislation—and how they went on to change the country.
Inspiring war stories are familiar. But what about after-the-war stories? From a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Over Here is the Greatest Generation's after-the-war story—vivid portraits of how the original G.I. Bill empowered an entire generation and reinvented the nation. The G.I. Bill opened college education to the masses, transformed America from a nation of renters into a nation of homeowners, and enabled an era of prosperity never before seen in the world. Doctors, teachers, engineers, researchers, and Nobel Prize winners who had never considered college an option rewrote the American Dream thanks to this most visionary legislation.
"Vivid . . . Deeply moving, alive with the thrill of people from modest backgrounds discovering that the opportunities available to them were far greater than anything they had dreamed of." —Los Angeles Times
"Poignant . . . The human dramas scattered throughout the narrative are irresistible." —The Denver Post
"Fascinating . . . The book's statistics are eye-opening, but it's the numerous personal vignettes that bring this account to life. . . . At its best, these passages are reminiscent of Studs Terkel's Depression-era and World War II oral histories." —The Plain Dealer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Humes examines and celebrates the G.I. Bill, the benefit program for veterans signed into law two weeks after D-Day. A remarkably farsighted piece of legislation, the G.I. Bill aimed to reintegrate into American society the 16 million veterans who would return from WWII. To explain how the bill worked, Humes (Mississippi Mud) tells the stories of 10 veterans, showing how G.I. benefits changed their postwar lives and transformed American society. In the five years after V-J Day, eight million returning vets made use of the bill's educational provisions, while the bill's loan guarantees brought home ownership within the reach of five million vets, resulting in the explosive development of suburbia. Humes is alert to the G.I. Bill's failures as well. For example, black vets were shunted into vocational training rather than college and were systematically redlined away from the new suburbs. Humes has a political point to make: the bill, he says, was an enormous giveaway program by big government, one that cost a fortune while reaping an even larger fortune for the country. Yet the WWII vets who benefited from this largesse became the core constituency opposing taxpayer funding of social programs, with the result that only meager benefits await those returning from today's wars.
