In this revelatory evening featuring the award-winning historian David Nasaw and celebrated journalist Mike Barnicle, we’ll re-examine post-World War II America, looking beyond the victory parades and into the veterans’ and nation’s unhealed traumas—the subject of Nasaw’s new book The Wounded Generation.

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home, immeasurable. The veterans who came home to America were not the same people as those who had left for war. The Wounded Generation tells the indelible stories of the veterans and their loved ones as they confronted the aftershocks of World War II. In this richly textured examination, David Nasaw presents a complicated portrait of those who brought the war home with them, including such influential political and cultural leaders as John F. Kennedy, Robert Dole, Henry Kissinger, J. D. Salinger, Harry Belafonte, and Jimmy Stewart. Drawing from veterans’ memoirs, oral histories, and government documents, he illuminates a hidden chapter of American history—one of trauma, resilience, and a country in transition.

David Nasaw is a historian, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and bestselling author of The Last Million, named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and History Today, and, according to The Economist, one of the “six must-read books on the Second World War”; The Patriarch, a New York Times Five Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the New-York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize; and The Chief, winner of the Bancroft Prize. He is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and a past president of the Society of American Historians. In 2023, Nasaw was honored by the New York Public Library as a “Library Lion.”

Mike Barnicle is a veteran print and broadcast journalist recognized for his street-smart, straightforward style honed over nearly four decades in the field. The Massachusetts native has written 4,000-plus columns collectively for The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and the New York Daily News, and continues to champion the struggles and triumphs of the everyman by giving voice to the essential stories of today on television, radio, and in print.

Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network