In 1946, Hollywood released The Best Years of Our Lives, a film that featured three United States servicemen coming home after World War II. The title is caustic. The men struggle to readjust, and the movie is anxious, angry, and booze-soaked. A box-office hit in the United States and in Great Britain, audiences flocked to an honest depiction of the war’s end as a short celebration followed by turbulence.
Two recent books press readers to delve into these high expectations and stark realities of the postwar era. Isser Woloch’s The Postwar Moment: Progressive Forces in Britain, France, and the United States after World War II examines progressive forces that pushed for change and stood firm against returning to the prewar status quo. Laura McEnaney’s Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago uses the city’s neighborhoods to gauge what peacetime meant to people transformed by war. Woloch’s book is a sprawling political...
