The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian Paul
Fussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the American
infantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in
part on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirring
narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view
of the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealing
definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and
tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veil
of feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’s
brutal essence.
“A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussell
writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of
sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human
emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of
war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and
resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on
World War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands wholly apart.
Fussell’s profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers
underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their
experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and
a valuable lesson for future generations.
From the Hardcover edition.
關於作者:
Paul Fussell is the author of fifteen books,
including Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second
World War and The Great War and Modern Memory, which won
the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award
and was named by the Modern Library as one of the twentieth
century’s 100 best nonfiction books. He taught literature for many
years at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University. He
lives in Philadelphia with his wife.
From the Hardcover edition.