The wounded generation: coming home after WWII — David Nasaw and Frank Rich in conversation
Historian David Nasaw and writer Frank Rich discuss the psychological and social toll on WWII veterans returning to a changed America.
Why we picked this
The Greatest Generation mythology rarely makes room for what actually happened when millions of traumatized young men came home to a country that expected them to just move on. Nasaw and Rich bring the receipts.
The story of WWII veterans coming home is usually told as triumph. David Nasaw, the distinguished historian whose biographies of Carnegie, Hearst, and Kennedy redefined narrative nonfiction, examines the darker truth: a generation carrying psychological wounds that a grateful nation preferred not to see.
In conversation with Frank Rich, the former New York Times chief theater critic turned New York Magazine essayist and HBO producer, Nasaw explores how returning soldiers navigated a country that had moved on without them, and how the social contracts of postwar America were shaped by what veterans carried home.
Free and open to the public at CUNY’s Graduate Center, with virtual attendance available.