The GI Generation

February 28, 2000
Although it meanders as a narrative, this vividly recalled, detail-rich memoir fixes its gaze on a vanished Kentucky Depression childhood in a telling resonant with the hardships and frail innocence of between-the-wars America. Mathias (G.I. Jive), professor emeritus of history at the University of Dayton, was born in 1925 and raised in a town of 1,500; his father was a traveling grocery salesman, and his early childhood was a marked mixture of the isolated, agrarian milieu and the deprivation that battered the nation. Mathias sharply etches details of this time: as with the New Deal programs that transformed his region, he notes the strange confluence of rurality with the fears and wonders provoked by technology, economic fluctuations and war clouds. Throughout, the author is understandably haunted by ex post facto consideration of how many of his pals and mentors would soon be devoured by war; he does a fine job of explicating how the triumph over fascism of these Depression-tested small-town lads ironically sparked the dissolution of their homegrown, wholesome ways. His book is good enough to make one wish it were better. Although the book's pace is rather sedate--and Mathias too often contextualizes his era through withering contrast with the two generations (Boomers and Gen-Xers) that followed--this remains a sobering, well-considered and engrossing portrait of ordinary life in a tumultuous era. 66 b&w photos not seen by PW.

March 1, 2000
Written in the spirit of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, this is a lovingly recalled memoir of a Kentucky boy who went on to fight in World War II, with details and moments that warmly resonate for anyone of that age. An aside--that somewhere on these streets and riverbanks is the origin of the determination and courage that won the war--gives this innocent upbringing in a small American town a great deal of force. Mathias (professor emeritus, history, Univ. of Dayton) recalls friends and relatives and how they later went on to exploits overseas, sometimes giving the supreme sacrifice of their lives. Vivid and accurate, poignant and funny, this is a marvelous picture of prewar life whose readability is enhanced by its insights into what makes the American character--in one homespun kid at least.--Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, CA

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