Was it really such a "good war"? It was, if popular memory is to be trusted. We knew who the enemy was. We knew what we were fighting for. The war was good for the economy. It was liberating for women. It was a war of tanks and airplanes—a cleaner war than World War I. Americans were united. Soldiers were proud. It was a time of prosperity, sound morality, and power.

But according to historian Michael Adams, our memory is distorted, and it has left us with a misleading—even dangerous—legacy. Challenging many of our common assumptions about the period, Adams argues that our experience of World War II was positive but also disturbing, creating problems that continue to plague us today.