One of our most enduring national myths surrounds the men and women who fought in the so-called "Good War." The Greatest Generation, we're told by Tom Brokaw and others, fought heroically, then returned to America happy, healthy and well-adjusted. They quickly and cheerfully went on with the business of rebuilding their lives. In this shocking and hauntingly beautiful book, historian Thomas Childers shatters that myth. He interweaves the intimate story of three families-including his own-with a decades' worth of research to paint an entirely new picture of the war's aftermath. Each of these men spent two years overseas, fought and survived the war, and returned home. But the war changed them unalterably, and as the years passed, it leached out in desperate, sometimes destructive ways. Novelistic in its telling and impeccably researched, "Soldier From the War Returning" is a stark reminder that the price of was is unimaginably high. The consequences are human, not just political, and the toll can stretch across generations.