
The Wounded Generation
Coming Home After World War II
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Pre-order for $28.80
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
-
David Nasaw
About this listen
From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a revelatory reexamination of post-World War II America and the nation's unhealed traumas, exposing the fault lines that characterized the country then and now
The veterans of World War II returned to America with great expectations. After all, the Great Depression was over, the Germans and the Japanese were defeated, and the home front was celebrating victory. After their heroic service overseas, Black service members believed their countrymen would look beyond racial divides, Jewish soldiers hoped antisemitism would be vanquished, and the wounded assumed that America would care for their injuries. More than 75 years later, the enduring image of postwar America is still informed by the hopes and dreams these veterans carried home with them, that their future–and with it, the nation’s–would be brighter than the past. However, as historian David Nasaw makes evident in this masterful recontextualization of these years, the stories of post-World War II America which persist across art, history, and literature, have failed to account for the realities of the veterans’ return as well as the traumas that characterized postwar America–the consequences of which we still live with today.
In The Wounded Generation, David Nasaw illustrates how veterans and civilians alike were confronted with the aftershocks of World War II, and how the media and the government failed to prepare America for what lay ahead. News outlets, which had censored the carnage of battle, now had to account for the grief and guilt felt by surviving soldiers; motion pictures and radio programs struggled to portray the true anxieties of homecoming, as husbands, wives, and children were reunited after not just time but trauma. Women who had been welcomed into the workforce lost their jobs to returning soldiers, and were pushed back into the home; doctors, who had no understanding of PTSD, were unprepared for the rise of neuropsychiatric disorders and unable to treat those afflicted. The nation faced enormous challenges transitioning to a peacetime economy; jobs, homes, and cars were in short supply; crime, alcoholism, unemployment, homelessness, and divorce were on the rise. The country took a major step in passing the GI Bill, which provided veterans with tuition, unemployment compensation, low-cost mortgages, and business loans, but Nasaw also reveals the political machinations behind the bill, and how states eager to preserve the status quo disproportionately blocked Black, gay, and female veterans from receiving benefits. The social issues which were laid bare in the immediate post war period–racism, gender biases, homophobia, lack of affordable housing, no national healthcare system, and severe income inequality–continue to ravage our nation and its people.
In this richly textured examination, David Nasaw presents a fascinating and complicating tableau of the postwar years. Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including personal memoirs and oral histories from veterans themselves, he looks beyond the welcome crowds and victory parades, and illuminates a largely hidden story of a country in transition.
©2025 David Nasaw (P)2025 Penguin AudioPeople who viewed this also viewed...
-
First Class Comrades
- The Stasi in the Cold War, 1945-1961
- By: J. Boulter
- Narrated by: Graham Mack
- Length: 36 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No country in history has been more deeply penetrated by spies than divided Germany after the Second World War. Fighting for the eastern corner were the 'first class comrades' of the Stasi—the East German Ministry for State Security. Rising from the ruins of a defeated country, and guided by its KGB masters, the early Cold War saw the Stasi establish itself as one of the world's most notorious spy and secret police agencies.
By: J. Boulter
-
1942
- When World War II Engulfed the Globe
- By: Peter Fritzsche
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1942, historian Peter Fritzsche offers a gripping, ground-level portrait of the decisive year when World War II escalated to global catastrophe. With the United States joining the fight following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, all the world’s great powers were at war. The debris of ships sunk by Nazi submarines littered US beaches, Germans marauded in North Africa, and the Japanese swept through the Pacific.
By: Peter Fritzsche
-
Enemies of All
- The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy
- By: Richard Blakemore
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A groundbreaking history of pirates, Enemies of All combines narrative adventure with deeply researched analysis, engrossing listeners in the rise of piracy in the later seventeenth century, the debates about piracy in contemporary law and popular media, as well as the imperial efforts to suppress piracy in the early eighteenth century.
-
The Sun Rising
- King James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain, 1603-1625
- By: Anna Whitelock
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The British monarchy of today descends directly from one leader: King James I, whose huge—and much overlooked—influence launched England as a major international trade power, established the King James Bible, and united the royal families of Scotland and England under one house and one monarch.
By: Anna Whitelock
-
World Enemy No. 1
- Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews
- By: Jochen Hellbeck
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II—tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility towards Soviet Russia.
By: Jochen Hellbeck
-
Agents of Change
- The Women Who Transformed the CIA
- By: Christina Hillsberg
- Narrated by: Valerie Plame, Christina Hillsberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly, Agents of Change tells an enthralling and, at times, disturbing story set against the backdrop of the evolving women’s movement. It was the 1960s, a “secretarial” era, when women first gained a foothold and pushed against the one-dimensional, pop-culture trope of the sexy Cold War Bond Girl. Underestimated but undaunted, they fought their way, decade-by-decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.
-
First Class Comrades
- The Stasi in the Cold War, 1945-1961
- By: J. Boulter
- Narrated by: Graham Mack
- Length: 36 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No country in history has been more deeply penetrated by spies than divided Germany after the Second World War. Fighting for the eastern corner were the 'first class comrades' of the Stasi—the East German Ministry for State Security. Rising from the ruins of a defeated country, and guided by its KGB masters, the early Cold War saw the Stasi establish itself as one of the world's most notorious spy and secret police agencies.
By: J. Boulter
-
1942
- When World War II Engulfed the Globe
- By: Peter Fritzsche
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1942, historian Peter Fritzsche offers a gripping, ground-level portrait of the decisive year when World War II escalated to global catastrophe. With the United States joining the fight following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, all the world’s great powers were at war. The debris of ships sunk by Nazi submarines littered US beaches, Germans marauded in North Africa, and the Japanese swept through the Pacific.
By: Peter Fritzsche
-
Enemies of All
- The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy
- By: Richard Blakemore
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A groundbreaking history of pirates, Enemies of All combines narrative adventure with deeply researched analysis, engrossing listeners in the rise of piracy in the later seventeenth century, the debates about piracy in contemporary law and popular media, as well as the imperial efforts to suppress piracy in the early eighteenth century.
-
The Sun Rising
- King James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain, 1603-1625
- By: Anna Whitelock
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The British monarchy of today descends directly from one leader: King James I, whose huge—and much overlooked—influence launched England as a major international trade power, established the King James Bible, and united the royal families of Scotland and England under one house and one monarch.
By: Anna Whitelock
-
World Enemy No. 1
- Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews
- By: Jochen Hellbeck
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II—tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility towards Soviet Russia.
By: Jochen Hellbeck
-
Agents of Change
- The Women Who Transformed the CIA
- By: Christina Hillsberg
- Narrated by: Valerie Plame, Christina Hillsberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly, Agents of Change tells an enthralling and, at times, disturbing story set against the backdrop of the evolving women’s movement. It was the 1960s, a “secretarial” era, when women first gained a foothold and pushed against the one-dimensional, pop-culture trope of the sexy Cold War Bond Girl. Underestimated but undaunted, they fought their way, decade-by-decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.
-
Deadwood
- Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West
- By: Peter Cozzens
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sifting through layers and layers of myth and legend—from nineteenth-century dime novels like Deadwood Dick to HBO prestige dramas to the casino billboards outside of present-day Deadwood trumpeting the hand of “aces and eights” that Hickok purportedly held when he was shot—Peter Cozzens unveils the true face of Deadwood, South Dakota, the storied mining town that sprang up in early 1876, just as the young United States was celebrating its hundredth birthday, and came raining down in ashes only three years later.
By: Peter Cozzens
-
Chain of Fire
- Campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-98
- By: Peter Hart
- Narrated by: Graham Mack
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1880s, control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield into which Prime Minister Gladstone did not want to step—until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war. It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought, and civilians caught in the crossfire. Among the British officers were figures who would later adopt starring roles in the First World War, such as Egyptian Army sapper Captain Herbert Kitchener.
By: Peter Hart
-
Three Roads to Gettysburg
- Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation
- By: Tim McGrath
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg.
By: Tim McGrath
-
1929
- The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History
- By: Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes listeners inside the chaos of the crash.
-
Retribution
- By: Trevor Reed, Jim DeFelice
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The gritty memoir of a former US Marine and Presidential Guard, who, after being unjustly held and abused in a Russian gulag for three years and freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange, seeks revenge against his former Russian captors by volunteering to fight in Ukraine.
By: Trevor Reed, and others
-
1978
- Baseball and America in the Disco Era
- By: David Krell
- Narrated by: David Krell
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From spring training to the World Series, 1978 gave baseball fans one of the sport's greatest seasons, full of legendary moments like the battle between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox for the American League East pennant, Gaylord Perry's three thousandth strikeout, Tom Seaver's only career no-hitter, Willie McCovey's five hundredth home run, and Pete Rose's marathon forty-four-game hitting streak.
By: David Krell